Class 
Book 




^iqf 



'v^-.y a) 



l^?f 



G^ghtB?- 



/4s 



COEXRIGHT DEPOS 




Tlie Old Sycamore 



MY OWN 
MAIN STREET 



BY 

Wm, A, Johnston / 



4 







CINCINNATI 

THE STANDARD PUBLISHING COMPANY 



Copyright, 1921 
THE STANDARD PUBLISHING COMPANY 









M -3 1922 



^r'.i.AGBS^SS 



1/ 



''\/v^ 



•V 



To MY SON, George E. Johnston, 
who served thru the World War 
as First Lieutenant in THE UNITED 
STATES AIR SERVICE, and who re- 
turned home from overseas a living 
exemplification of the cruelties of war, 
the injustice of republics for sacrifices 
volunteered, and freely given at the 
first call to arms — and to his departed 
friend and fellow-officer, Henry Clay 
Thompson, who gave the supreme sac- 
rifice at the time and place my son 
received his injuries, and whose body 
now rests in a charming little church- 
yard overlooking the North Sea, in 
farthest northern England — this little 
narrative of American life is affection- 
ately and reverently dedicated. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword 15 

CHAPTEE I. 

Something that Leads Up to and Explains 
Something Else 19 

CHAPTER II. 

The Beginning of Main Street and the In- 
troduction OF "Skinny" and ''George" 23 

CHAPTER III. 

''Hen" Brouchler's Blacksmith Shop, Rag 
Carpets and ''Speaker" and "Honey" 
Banks 33 

CHAPTER IV. 

Johnny PoweIjL, Buckwheat Vender, Sur- 
prises His Wipe 45 

CHAPTER V. 

' ' Splinters ' ' 49 

5 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VI. PAGE 

The Bells of Greendale, the Grave-digger, 

AND the Town Painter and Band Room... 55 
¥ 
CHAPTER VII. 

The Church Janitor, Railroad Detective 

and "The Haunted House" 65 

CHAPTER VIII. 

"Slop" Marshall, Billposter Stump, et Al... 71 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Justice of the Peace, the Baker and 
Retired Farmer — The Town Square and 
a Few Eccentric Citizens 81 

CHAPTER X. 

The Biggest Nose in Greendale — Marcus 
Candee, the Lawyer — Brown's Drug- 
store AND Doc Anawalt 93 

CHAPTER XI. 

Surveyer Clarke Warden and Thomas Bar- 
clay, THE Banker 103 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Station Store, Court-house Square and 

Nicknames 109 

6 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XIII. PAGE 

The Old Songs, Political Marching Clubs 
AND John Wells, Horse-trader, and 
Others ' 117 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Court-house, the Gravestone Cutters, 

"The Lallapaloosa, " et Al 125 

CHAPTER XV. 

Seat of the Political Spellbinders, "Stut- 
tering Joe, ' ' the Town Editors and Jew- 
ish Clothier 141 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Black's Hotel — Jim Oreen, Hotel Porter — 
The Gamblers — Minstrel Band — The Ab- 
sent-minded Minister — Deafy Mills and 
THE Scotch Peddler H7 

CHAPTER XVII. 

"Honey Fly" Haynes 159 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Organ-grinder, the Fantastic Parades, 

the Street Fakirs, and Strap Oil 167 

7 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XIX. PAGE 

Ashes on the Slide — Pike Pole — Amos Kelly, 

AND Nathaniel Dickenhooper 175 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Landlord of the Kettering House, the 
Snake-charmer, Aunt Lizzie Kincaid and 
THE Horse Doctor 187 

CHAPTER XXI. 

' ' Blind Lew ' ' Kendall, the Town Constable, 
THE Printing-office, the Town Artist 
and Jim Silvis, the Hack Driver 193 

CHAPTER XXII. 

A Mellow and Affable Crowd — ''Bumble- 
bee" Lewis — "Iodine Joe" and Hugh 
Artlay, the Pump Doctor 201 

CHAPTER XXIII; 

The Men of Greendale, and Amos Kepper, 

the Spiritualist : 205 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Open Country — Pillars in the Church 
—The Town Bootmaker — Cemetery Hill 
AND THE Town Tragedy 213 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XXV. page 

Lew Henry, the Locomotive Engineer — Mrs. 
MoNEGAN 's Shanty — The Railroad Wreck 
— B air's Mill and Beggarloots 221 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

"The First Regrets of the Day" — The Old 
Home and Mother — ' ' The Home-coming ' ' 
AND "The Old Swimming-hole" 227 



POEMS 

PAGE 

Sad Perversity, James Whitcomb Riley 17 

The Road to Yesterday, Will M. Maupin 21 

Real Swimming, Edgar A. Guest 27 

The Decision, G. S. Applegarth 47 

The Playmates of Yesterday 54 

The Village Doctor, Horace S. Keller... 101 

The Old Songs, Will M. Maupin 119 

He Found It, San Francisco Bulletin 156 

We Who Stay at Home, Edgar A. Guest 164 

In a Friendly Sort o' Way 172 

Ashes on the Slide, Eugene Field 177 

Child and Mother, Eugene Field 231 

Contentment, Eugene Field 238 



10 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The Old Sycamore Frontispiece 

"Welty's Watering-trough. 25 

Taylor 's Ice-pond 28 

Henry Brouehler's Blacksmith Shop 34 

Levi Bronchler 36 

Aunt Sally 39 

Fultie - 40 

''Speaker" and ''Honey" Banks 41 

Johnny Powell 45 

Splinters 49 

Neddy McGuire 53 

Bells 56 

Passing Cemetery 59 

' ' Ground-hog ' ' 59 

Fliggers' Stone Wall 61 

' ' Billy the Bum ' ' 65 

Frank Strong 66 

"Skillet Breaker" Maynes 67 

' ' Slop ' ' Marshall 71 

John Martin Luther Stump 73 

Doctor Towne 74 

11 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Jim Biggs 75 

Tommy Gill 75 

Peg-legged Johnnj'' Quinn 76 

Corporal Hock 76 

Ben Myers 79 

Alex Trimble 82 

John McQuaid 83 

James Porter Kinard 84 

Billy McQuaid 87 

Gypsy 89 

Jim Wells 94 

Marcus Candee, Esq 95 

Edwin Boice 98 

Dr. Anawalt 100 

Eailway Station 110 

Leap Frog Ill 

' ' Beardy ' ' Seward 129 

Just Whiskers 130 

Lawyers 131 

Old Pete 134 

Lallapaloosa 136 

Fur Coat 137 

Laughing Joe McClain 138 

Baltimore Twist 143 

Editor of Tribune 143 

Editor of Argus 144 

12 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Inmate of County Home 147 

Son of an Honorable 150 

Bill Hixon 151 

Constable 153 

Cheese-cutter Mills 154 

Honey Fly 159 

Trained Bear 168 

Amos Kelly 181 

Kettering House Landlord 187 

Dutch Liz 188 

Doctor Moyer 190 

Professor Grlogger 198 

Jim Silvis 199 

Bumblebee Lewis 201 

Iodine Joe 203 

Sexton Truxwell 214 

Deafy Stimp 216 

Hare-lipped Larry 222 

Old Home 228 

The Old Swimming-hole 234 



13 



FOREWORD 

IN compiling these reminiscences of 
"My Own Main Street/' the writer's 
thought was to keep the manuscript, 
crude sketches and drawings of the places 
and characters mentioned only as a 
"Family Souvenir," and it was only after 
much persuasion by those who had been 
permitted to read the notes and see the 
drawings and sketches that the objections 
to its publication were overcome. 

Many a pleasant leisure hour was 
spent in writing the incidents and describ- 
ing the times, places, characters (no two 
characters are ever alike), and in making 
the sketches and draAvings. I have also 
taken the liberty of using several poems 
of Edgar A. Guest and Will M. Maupin, 
and have made free adaptations from 
Maupin 's "Home-coming" and "Old 
Days" — two men whose verse and prose 
are so intensely human and so truly 

2 ^ 15 



FOREWORD 



interpretative of the every-day life of the 
common people. 

To have published this story of ''My 
Own Main Street" at an earlier day might 
have been a breach of trust and decorum. 
The terms of trust, I hope, have been 
noUed by limitation. Many of the char- 
acters named have paid the debt of nature, 
and, if any be living, the long time inter- 
vening has, I hope, blurred any asperity 
the descriptions may seem to contain, or 
that they could hardly object to so remote 
a reference to them. 



16 



SAD PERVERSITY.* 

When but a little boy, it seemed 
My dearest rapture ran 

In fancy ever, when I dreamed 
I was a Man — a Man! 

Now — sad perversity ! My theme 

Of rarest, purest joy 
Is when, in fancy blest, I dream 

I am a Little Boy ! 



*From the "Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of 
James Whitcomb Riley." Copyright, 1913. Used by the special 
permission of the publishers, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. 



17 



CHAPTER I. 

Something that Leads Up to and 
Explains Something Else. 

HERE is no volume for the city-bred. 
He never knows what youth may 
mean afield. He must, perforce, have 
missed in life the wonder of real boyhood 
in the outdoors, the unconscious delight 
of knowing every one and every corner 
of every back lot. 

The sketchy recollections here set 
down were first intended for a personal 
souvenir, and with them went my own 
crude drawings and a cruder map. Now, 
those who saw the drawings, and who 
read casually, protest that, though the 
Main Street of this lazy narrative was 
that of a little Pennsylvania town, all 
Main Streets are alike, and they believe 
that those who, all too many years ago, 
knew Main Streets, will not be ungrate- 
ful if their memories are stirred. 

19 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The illustrations of Harry C. Temple, 
of the American Newspaper Service, New 
York, are proof enough that he was reared 
in a small town, and that he still can 
visualize its tragedy and comedy, its hopes 
and fears, impulses and emotions. He is 
the richer for it. 

So, I hope, are all to whom brick pave- 
ments and high buildings, street-cars and 
street lighting, came later in life. Any 
one can know a city and what a city 
means, but one must be country-bred to 
know the country as it is worth while to 
know it. 



20 



THE ROAD TO YESTERDAY. 

Will M. Maupin. 

Down the long, broad road as it leads away 

To the pleasant scenes of a yesterday — 

To the orchard wide where the laden trees 

Swing to and fro in the balmy breeze ; 

By the old well-sweep with its creaking pole 

And the big white rock by the swinmiing-hole — ^ 

Ah, the scent that comes from the new-mown hay 

Whose long drifts lay 

Where the sunbeams play 
On the long, wide road to yesterday! 

The milestones stand with their tinge of gray 

As the mind harks back to yesterday, 

And the road grows smooth as the eyes behold 

The long-lost scenes of the days of old — 

Faces bright of the old school crowd 

Long since wrapped in sheet and shroud ; 

Welcome shouts from the chums so gay 

Who romp and play 

In the old-time way 
By the long, wide road to yesterday! 

The evening lamp through the window shines, 
And we see once more the stumbling lines 
Of the old text-books, and each puzzling rule 

21 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

That caused us grief in the hours of school. 
And a sweet old face 'gainst the window pane 
Looks down the reach of the shady lane; 
And the welcome gleams in her bright eyes play 

As on we stray 

Through the evening gray 
Down the old, old road to yesterday ! 

Down the long, wide road as it leads away 

To the old-time scenes of that yesterday 

When the heart was light as the thistle's down, 

And we little knew of the hard world 's frown ; 

Where the friends we knew were the girls and boys 

To divide our woes and to share our joys — 

Where life was sweet and the hours were gay 

With love and play 

In our childhood way 
At the end of the road to yesterday! 



22 



CHAPTER II. 

The Beginning of Main Street and 

Introduction of "Skinny" 

AND "George." 

I HAD a stone bruise on my left heel; I 
was sunburnt, barefoot, clad in ging- 
ham shirt, stained Kentucky jeans sup- 
ported by a pair of dad's old suspenders, 
and I bore for my protection a slingshot 
and a pocketful of carefully selected peb- 
bles. It was early Indian summer, on a 
Saturday morning, and I set out to ex- 
plore, for the first time, the Main Street 
in my native town. Days like that no 
man who was not city-bred can forget. 

It was a holiday, and I had always 
wanted the chance. For weeks I had 
dreamed, boy fashion, of traveling that 
street, without the guidance of my elders, 
from Welty's watering-trough to Bair's 
Mill. It was a good three miles in all, 
just such a three miles of dusty road as 

23 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



runs — or ran fifty years ago — through 
most county-seats in America, and it was 
very wonderful to me. 

So I rose early, went out to Barclay's 
pasture for our cow, and ate my break- 
fast while my brother milked her. Then 
T drove the cow back, put up the bars, 
and felt my day's work was done. From 
the pasture an avenue of old locust-trees 
led to the old watering-trough, and there 
I drank deeply of the cool spring which 
fed it. 

Climbing to the top of the moss- 
covered trough, I found the surface agi- 
tated by the antics of a school of water- 
bugs, which skipped and slid and took 
counsel together after the aimless fashion 
of their kind. I flung pebbles at them, 
but they gathered again and again, and 
slid round and round and back and forth, 
en masse, just the same. I have since 
learned that persecution has the same 
effect on men. 

It was Indian summer, but no boy can 
play about a watering-trough and keep 
his feet dry. I bathed mine, and, as I did 
so, flung acorns at a covey of yellow but- 

24 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




Welty's Watering-trough 



terflies which, despite impending frost, 
were hovering over the prints of horses' 
hoofs in the mud beside the trough, I 
dipped my broad-brimmed straw hat in 
the water, and tried in vain to catch a 
small green frog. I pushed out the crown 
of the hat clown-fashion, set it all drip- 
ping upon my head, and journeyed south- 
wards, kicking up the dust in the wheel- 
tracks, chasing the big, grayish-brown 
grasshoppers and flinging stones at the 
chipmunks which frisked along the 

25 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

worm fences. Main Street's lure was 
waning. 

To eastward, beyond a great patch of 
goldenrod and wild aster, gorgeous in 
green and red and gold, were Culbertson's 
Woods. I could have played there all day 
long. I think I could even now. 

I might have gathered nuts and late 
mulberries, wild grapes and Indian turnip, 
sassafras, inkberries, corn silk from 
the neighboring fields for next week's 
smoking. I could have chased ground 
squirrels, used my slingshot upon the red- 
winged blackbirds, dramatized imaginary 
adventures all day long. And, on my way 
home, I could have smeared my hands 
and legs and face with pokeberries and 
returned at night a regular desperado. 

But in the dust two tumblebugs rolled, 
industriously, a round, brown ball, not 
unlike a crocky marble. They moved 
toward town, steadily, if slowly. I teased 
them, but it did not alter their course. If 
tumblebugs could stick to their path, so 
could I. Culbertson's Woods were always 
there. 



26 



REAL SWIMMING.* 
Edgar A. Guest. 

I saw him in the distance, as the train went speed- 
ing by, 

A shivery little fellow standing in the sun to dry, 

And a little pile of clothing very near him I could 
see; 

He was owner of a gladness that had once belonged 
to me. 

I have shivered as he shivered ; I have dried the 
way he dried ; 

I've stood naked in God's sunshine with my gar- 
ments at my side; 

And I thought, as I beheld him, of the many weary 
men 

Who would like to go in swimming as a little boy 
again. 



*Froni "Over Here." Copyright, 1918, by The Reilly & Lee Co., 
Mr. Guest's publishers, and reprinted by their permission. 



27 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Shrill voices came from Taylor's ice- 
pond, and I had no trouble in recogniz- 
ing them. "Skinny" was there, and 
George too, and I knew the water, de- 
spite the chill in the morning air, could 
not yet be cold. 




Taylor's Ice-pond 

I climbed in the little north window of 
the ice-house, and dug down through the 
dry sawdust to the moist, then to the wet, 
and at last to the ice. With a Barlow 
knife, used as a pick, I clipped off a good- 
sized chunk, slipped out the window, cut 
around the north end of the shed, jumped 

28 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

the fence at the corner, and hailed my 
friends. 

Two killdeers rose, scolding, circled 
the pond a couple of times, and flew away 
in disgust. I shared my ice with George 
and ''Skinny," washed the sawdust and 
mud from my own share, sucked and 
swallowed it hastily, and peeled off my 
clothes. Then I dove from the roof of 
the ice-house, and proceeded to more seri- 
ous business. 

With a wet dab of brown clay, I 
painted my companions' naked bodies 
grotesquely, striping one perpendicularly 
and the other tiger-fashion; for myself, I 
preferred two-inch squares. Our faces 
were those of Zulu warriors, and we began 
the war-dance, chanting. 

Then old Jersey came around the cor- 
ner of the ice-house, striding resolutely, 
and he carried a long apple sucker. He 
did not believe in having boys burrow in 
his ice-house and uncover valuable ice. 
He pretended not to believe in boys going 
swimming and undressed for it. 

We splashed ashore, snatched up our 
clothes, and raced along the road fence to 

29 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

hide in a clump of elderberry bushes. 
Jersey was too wise to follow, and we set 
ourselves to dress. 

Some vandal — and I have some trouble 
clearing my own good name — ^had visited 
their clothes, and there was *'beef to 
chaw" before arms would go into sleeves 
or feet down trouser legs. There always 
is when boys go swimming. 

We dressed without delay, clay stripes 
and all, and dodged furtively through 
Dave AUman's garden, picking wild cher- 
ries as we went and skipping gaudy, vari- 
colored, old-fashioned flower-beds, on our 
Avay to the big wooden pump in the yard. 
Dave's daughter — ^^Slim Jin" the boys 
called her — stood in the doorway and 
laughed wisely at our streaked faces. A 
muslin bag of curdled milk, soon to be 
schmierkase, hung on the jamb of the 
door. 

''Slim Jin" gave us a bucket, a couple 
of handfuls of soft soap and plenty of ad- 
vice, and we used all three. Boylike, then, 
we showed our gratitude by knocking 
pears off the trees as we went through the 
front yard. 

30 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Wading through catnip and horehound, 
horsemint and pennyroyal, knee-deep 
along the fence, we climbed over into 
Barclay's field and headed for the shade 
of the big locust-trees. There was a toad- 
stool there, of record size, which we tore 
to pieces, and a white locust shell strange- 
ly flawless; then a bumblebees' nest. 

There is but one boy's way of looting 
a bumblebees' nest, and we tried that. 
We set out to kill every bee as it came out 
in response to prodding with a stick, and 
completed the work with but two casual- 
ties. *' Skinny" was stung on the leg, 
and George had a closed eye, which re- 
quired treatment with mud. I fell into a 
cluster of wild locusts. 

Bumblebee honey isn't of the best, but 
we ate it, strong and dark though it was, 
and turned our attention to the gold- 
finches — yellow birds, we called them — 
which flew among the thistles. We used 
our slingshots as they flew and twittered; 
we tried to hit them as they perched on 
quivering milkweed-pods to feast upon 
the seeds. We aimed in vain, too, at 
meadow-larks on the ground and along 

3 31 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

the fences, and always missed. Then we 
came to Bronchler's apple orchard. 

I have read since, I think in Bur- 
roughs, that *'the apple is indeed the fruit 
of youth," and I believe it as I recall the 
Rambos which we found there. 

Certain it is that, when man ceases to 
eat apples unashamed upon the street; 
when he grows reluctant to carry them 
in his pockets; when he does not visit his 
neighbor's orchard, or spends his winter 
evenings without them close to hand — ^he 
has begun to age, either in heart or years. 



32 



CHAPTER III. 

"Hen" Brouchler's Blacksmith Shop, 

Rag Carpets and "Speaker" and 

"Honey" Banks. 

NEXT comes Henry Brouchler's black- 
smith shop, and blacksmiths' shops 
are always wonderful to boys. We never 
passed that way without a pause for 
greetings, and to see his horseshoes in the 
making, 

''Hen," as he was known to all the 
county, was at the anvil, and the fiery 
sparks flew every way, keeping us mark- 
ing time to save our bare toes. He had 
miscalculated size a few moments before, 
and had sheared off a bit of metal which 
looked for all the world like a piece of 
putty or a little painted block. 

This George picked up, and he 
shrieked as his fingers closed upon the 
searing metal. The odor of burning flesh 
mingled with that of scorched shavings 

33 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

from horses ' hooves and burning charcoal. 
''Hen" laid down his hammer wearily,, 
He was used to boys. 

He wrapped the blistered fingers in a 
soiled rag and soothed with liberal oint- 
ment of some kind of horse liniment or 




Henry Brouchler's Blacksmith Shop 



other, and drove us out, threatening 
frightful penalties if we ventured there 
again. 

Henry Brouchler was famed through- 
out the county for the high grade and 
superior finish of the wheelbarrows which 

34 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

he turned out betweentimes. They were 
all bright red, matching Schuey's barn in 
color, and so heavily and strongly made 
that it took a strong man to handle one. 
I remember that once, when my father 
had a new one of that make, it took three 
of "US boys to budge it with half a load. 

A few paces down the street two iron 
pegs stood at proper intervals in the 
trampled, cindery earth, with four horse- 
shoes, one of them a ^'ringer," bearing 
testimony to the pitch which won yes- 
terday's last game. The loafers of the 
town had not yet gathered for their fa- 
vorite sport, but we knew that within a 
few hours the street would resound with 
argument and contention on the fine 
points of the game, and with debate upon 
the relative merits of the contestants. 

I suspect, now, that times were hard 
that year in which so many of my fellow- 
townsmen were content to devote their 
time and energy to this simple and unat- 
tractive game. I had occasion once, dur- 
ing a period of industrial depression, to 
travel from coast to coast, and I can re- 
member how I looked from car window at 

35 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



village after village, small town after 
small town, to see groups of idle men 
about the railway station lounging as 
spectators at this idle game. 

I have concluded since that, whatever 
its handicap in pointlessness, pitching 

horseshoes is the 
favored diversion of 
the unemployed, in 
the small towns at 
least. 

We met Levi 
Brouchler then, a lit- 
tle, red-haired, red- 
bearded veteran of 
the war between the 
States, who never ap- 
peared anywhere in 
public save in the full uniform of a private 
soldier. 

Levi was a slow walker, and a most 
deliberate one, but no man along Main 
Street took longer strides. Levi often 
boasted of how he marched in the old 
days, and the story ran that he had been 
the one little man in a long-legged com- 
pany. 

36 




Levi Brouchler 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



He was not fond of work, although he 
turned his hand occasionally to the pro- 
duction of a few oak shingles or an order 
of fence posts or palings. 

In the Brouchler yard, which we 
reached next, was an old wooden swing 
we boys never passed in haste. Greorge 
and ''Skinny" and I climbed up, and 
"pumped" desperately, higher and higher, 
until we could touch the last sprays on the 
lower branches of the big tree. As "the 
old cat died," we leaped down to race 
down the road behind the old Salem hack, 
and climbed aboard, despite the protests 
and the threats of old man Patty. 

We rode in with him to Cashey's Cor- 
ners, resisting the temptation to cut across 
Culbertson's field to the big sycamore- 
tree, where generations of that town's 
boys had carved their names in the white 
bark. 

Then we lost George. He lived at 
Cashey's with his aunt, and she spied him 
on the hack, and summoned him to help 
Uncle Zemph with his carpet-weaving. 

Karl Zemph was a hustling little Ger- 
man, fat and full of business, always bust- 

37 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

ling and always at work. His carpet- 
weaving business was to the people of that 
old town what the neighborhood motion- 
picture theater is to the neighborhood 
to-day. 

Our townsfolk did not fare afield on 
wintry evenings in those days. They 
stayed by their own firesides, cutting and 
sewing for rag carpets and rugs. When 
the rags were cut into narrow, ribbon-like 
lengths, they were joined together at the 
ends and rolled into bowling-ball size. 
When enough were ready for a rag carpet 
or a rag rug Uncle Zemph, as all the town 
knew him, converted them into durable 
and bright-colored wares. 

Small boys liked to watch this process. 
We used to envy George his familiarity 
with it, his right to tinker with the clumsy 
loom. And we marveled, of course, at the 
transformation of rags into rugs. It is 
wonderful to me now. 

At the foot of the hill, just within the 
north borough line, was old Aunt Sally 
AUsworth's weather-stained cottage, sur- 
rounded by beds of tall hollyhocks 
and sweet-smelling pinks^ with warmer- 

38 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

colored, old-fashioned flowers everywhere. 
A fox grapevine clung to the choke-pear- 
tree before the door. 

Skinny chucked a stick into the tree, 
bringing down a handful of hard and 




Aunt Sally 

puckery pears, and a wren scolded from a 
neighboring peach-tree. 

Aunt Sally lived alone with cats and 
flowers, and she did not encourage friend- 
ships. She was a little old maid, reputed 
to enjoy an independent income sufficient 

39 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



for her economical mode of life. The 
pride of her heart was her garden, and 
strange stories ran of how she had the 
heavy work done there. 

One spring Aunt Sally hired 
^'Shinny's" brother Fulton to spade, rake 
and plant the plot, and Fulton spent a 
full Saturday holiday on the job, despite 
the fact that fish were biting. At dusk 
Aunt Sally came out into the yard. 

Fulton's back ached, but he glowed 
with pride in the fact that he had earned 
some money and he had 
spent half the day plan- 
ning his purchases. 

^^Fultie," said Aunt 
Sally, ''you have been a 
very good boy, and the 
garden looks very well 
indeed. And here is a 
bright, new penny, and 
I'm sure I hope you 
won't spend it foolishly." 
We always passed 
Aunt Sally's in a hurry, lest she ask us 
to work for her. That was a way she had, 
and we boys knew it. 

40 







Fultie 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



On the hill we met ''Speaker" and 
''Honey" Banks, elderly colored folk of 
old plantation stock. They were a prayer- 
ful couple, prominent in the negro church 
of the town, of whom good stories exist. 

"Speaker" was a big, 
black man, a powerful ex- 
horter, but susceptible to 
the blandishments of the 
"fair" sex. Though a dea- 
con in his church, he had 
been surprised one evening 
holding hands with one of 
the ewe lambs of the flock. 
There was excitement in 
the congregation. 

Brought before the 
church session, ' ' Speaker ' ' 
faced inquiry in regard to his conduct, and 
he responded with an astonishing plea. 

"Brudders," he said, "you hab seen 
de picters ob de 'Oreat Shepherd.' Ain't 
he alius got a lamb ob de flock in his 
arms ^ ' ' 

But the plea failed, for, after grave 
argument, the session brought in a resolu- 
tion to the effect that: 

41 




"Speaker" and 
' 'Honey' ' Banks 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

''Fo' the future peace an' dignity ob 
de congregation, de nex' time Deacon 
Banks am impelled to take a lamb in Ms 
arms, lie pick out a ram lamb.'' 

*' Honey" Banks, Ms wife, was heroine 
of a not altogether dissimilar tale. In 
street attire, she preferred the most ex- 
treme styles, running to large patterns 
and solid colors, a usual ornament being 
a necklace of buckeyes or horse-chestnuts, 
strung on a greasy corset cord. She in- 
variably '^got the Spirit" at every camp- 
meeting, and she delighted in giving way 
to her emotions. 

Once, indeed, when she was headed 
noisily for the mourners' bench, a well- 
disposed sister took it upon herself to 
quiet her. 

''Go way from me. Sister Mandie, go 
way," she said. "I doan want you to 
quiet me. I want Brudder Ephryham to 
quiet me." 

This was another of the stories that 
the old town liked. 

Halfway up the hill Widow Jack^s 
house is going up. *'Ez" Campbell and 
"Watt" Borlin, rival teamsters, each with 

42 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

big, gray teams, are bringing in the brick. 
They race all day. 

"Watt" talks through his nose to his 
horses all the time, and he undertakes to 
unload his burden in order to beat ''Ez" 
back to the brickyard. 

Always as he passed "Ez^s'' team on 
the street we could hear him call, "Kum 
hon, hu yed-hiskered son-hoo-a-gun. " It 
was his favored salutation, and every boy 
in town mimicked him. 

Next door Culbertson's new brick 
house was nearly finished, and a noisy 
group of carpenters was busy within. 
They let us gather a lot of blocks of wood 
and a pile of nails, which we hid in the 
fence comer near the road, to be called 
for later. Boys always do that — ^why, I 
can not understand. 

There must be something about scraps 
of wood, so plentiful about a new house, 
which stirs a boy's ambition, but I can 
not remember ever using any of the 
bushels of them I saved. 

Next was Attorney Jack Marchant's 
house, and, of course, we dragged sticks 
along the fence palings. Tip, the oldest 

43 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

and Grossest dog in town, came snarling 
out on the run, and we poked him bravely 
on the nose, once we made sure the gate 
was closed. 



44 



CHAPTER IV. 



Johnny Powell, Buckwheat Vender, 
Surprises His Wife. 

THEN Johnny Powell came by, and 
refused us a ride. We retorted after 
the manner of our kind and Johnny chir- 
ruped to his horse. He was a vulnerable 
target for the town's wit. __ 

Johnny specialized in 
growing buckwheat, and 
buckwheat flour made from 
the produce of his farm 
was famed throughout the 
county. I'll never forget 
those cakes — brown and 
light and tender and the 
full size of a plate, with a 
crisp, lazy fringe about the 
edges and little, volcano- 
like mounds and craters everywhere, de- 
signed, no doubt, to accommodate home- 
made butter and home-made maple syrup. 

45 




Johnny Powell 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

John Powell was not as good to look 
at as the cakes made from his buckwheat. 
He would not change his clothes. It was 
told of him, and I never questioned the 
truth of the story, that when one suit was 
actually falling to pieces, he would haggle 
and bargain for half a day for the cheap- 
est hand-me-down in town, and wear it 
thereafter, night and day, through rain 
and snow and sunshine, until similar 
necessity for a change arose again. 

Once, though, his custom brought him 
to grief. Snake-like, he had decided to 
change his skin, and he schemed to sur- 
prise his wife agreeably. On the way 
home with the new suit he undertook a 
complete change on the bridge over Loyal- 
hanna Creek, and flung his threadbare 
garments over the side into the rushing 
stream. He learned, then, that the jolting 
of his springless wagon over the rough 
roads had cost him the package containing 
the new suit, but it was too late. It could 
not be said of Johnnj^, in this back-to- 
nature costume, that ^ loveliness needs not 
the foreign aid of ornament, but is, when 
unadorned, adorned the most." 

46 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



He went home by dark, and the acci- 
dent did not spoil the surprise for his 

wife. 

THE DECISION. 

G. S. Applegarth, 

Ever heard tell o' Jake Wienerkraut — 
Feller that fanned Mike Casey out — 
And the wonderful fraction hit he made 
In the closest ball game ever played? 
That was some game, I want to say, 
An' it took some scorin' to score that play, 
An' it took an' umpire what knowed th' game 
To properly measure an' weigh th' same. 
That was back about — let me see — 
Somewhere 'long about seventy-three, 
Jim sons an' Chick weeds face to face 
Leadin' teams in th' pennant race. 
Crowd was fierce an' th' day was fair, 
Seemed like all mankind was there. 
Teams keyed up like a fiddle-string, 
Neek-an '-neck since early spring; 
Both determined to cop the rag, 
An' this was th' game that meant th' flag. 
Eighteen innings, I hope to die. 
Shades of night was drawin' nigh. 
Score one-one an' two men out. 
When the Chickweeds sent in Wienerkraut. 
Jimsons knowed by his wicked eye 
Time had come fer to do or die. 
Zip ! Strike one ; Jake only smiled ; 
4 47 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Zing! Strike two; an' th' crowd went wild; 
Zow! Wow-wow, came a rending crash — 
Jumped-up Jupiter, what a smash ! 
Sphere went rocketin' up in air. 
Seemed to bust like a bomb up there; 
Ball itself went clean out o' sight, 
Cover was ketched by the man at the right ; 
Jake was a-tearin' toward third sack. 
Umpire hollers an' calls him back; 
Fans was stunned an' th' players dazed, 
But, say, that umpire was never phased ; 
Motions for silence, calm an' cool. 
An' this is th' way he applied th' rule: 
"Half o' th' ball went over the fence, 
Half was ketched by the fielder, hence 
Half was a putout an' half a run, 
Score stands 1^ to 1." 



48 



CHAPTER Y. 



"Splinters." 

XT 7E were in town, now, and the board 
▼ ▼ walk began, a board walk ever full 
of splinters, which kept our Barlow knives 
busy. And 
here was the 
broad space 
devoted to 
the academy. 
^'The Blue 
Boys" and 
''The Old 
Westmore- 
lands" were 
both practic- 
ing on the grounds, making ready for the 
last game of the season, a sort of world's 
championship contest for the county and 
the countryside. But we could see base- 
ball almost any day, so were not inclined 
to tarry here. 

49 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

We cut across through the school- 
grounds, under the maples, past the com- 
pass stones used by the surveyors in ad- 
justing their instruments, and climbed the 
old frame stile, worn by many steps. 
There was a store there that day, impro- 
vised, owned and conducted by ^'Gruinea'^ 
Gilson, "Toad" Mitinger and '^Bill" 
Cherry, "Harrison Avenue and Mud- 
tow^n" boys. 

A sign above their stand bore the 
words, "No Trust — No Bust," and they 
sold vinegar sling and pear apples, the 
latter, no doubt, stolen from Culbertson's 
orchard. They asked five pins for a drink 
of sling and two for a big pear apple, but 
we still had Rambo apples in our pockets. 
We lacked pins, so we traded our white 
locust skin and our apples for two drinks 
of the compound of vinegar, water and 
sugar, and hurried on. 

We did not fear our teachers, on Satur- 
day, and our delight was noisy when we 
found on the old board fence where some 
resentful youngsters had scrawled "Hog- 
face Shawley." We supplemented it with 
"Michigan Apples," Mr. Shawley 's other 

50 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

popular nickname, and wondered if he'd 
recognize our writing on Monday. 

The boys called Teacher Shawley 
"Hog Face" because of his heavy jowl, 
little eyes, big ears and scrubby beard. 
''Michigan Apples" had to do with his- 
tory. 

Shawley came from Michigan, and 
once, shortly before the Christmas holi- 
days, he had won the good opinion of his 
pupils by the announcement that he had 
sent to Michigan for a barrel of the best 
apples that grew, and that he intended 
to give them to the school. 

The apples came, and Shawley stored 
them in his room at McQuaid's Hotel. The 
young men of the town learned of his 
plan, and helped themselves to more than 
half the barrel. The joke was on the chil- 
dren, rather than on Shawley, for the 
teacher promptly announced that, since 
?ie lacked apples to go around the class, 
he would give none at all. He made quite 
a speech, too, about those who had found 
his store - 

Aunt Bell was a more popular teacher, 
and one who inspired more respect. She 

51 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



ruled and the whole school enjoyed her 
rule. 

Once, I remember, a newly arrived 
English boy (Darsey Bills) brought ver- 
min in his shock of hair into the school- 
room, and took his seat in the middle of 
the three-seated benches then in use. 

He scratched, and presently his seat- 
mates scratched. Aunt Bell guessed why. 

She had Darsey taken, despite his pro- 
tests, to the livery-stable, sheared with 
horse-clippers and well greased with lard 
and red precipitate. She made trouble in 
many households, too, by encouraging the 
most strenuous of fine hair-combings and 
shampooing. 

It was Aunt Bell who tried her best 
to teach ^'Bud" King to spell, and failed. 
He could not get past b-a-t. She tried 
him on that again and again, and finally 
spelled it out to him, and asked him what 
it meant. He looked at her blankly. 

''Why, Buddie," said Aunt Bell, "you 
must know what it is that files around in 
the early evening. You've seen it ever 
so many times. Spell it again, now, and 
pronounce it." 

52 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



''Bud" never lacked assurance. 

"B-A-T," lie spelled confidently, 
' ' Whippoorwill. ' ' 

There is the Catholic Church and 
Father Otto, the good priest, walks to and 
fro in the garden beside it, 
reading a book. Old Neddy 
McGuire, homeward bound 
from mass, was just coming 
out, but we could not stop 
to ask him of the accom- 
plishments of his sons, or 
concerning the famine of 
forty-eight, or question him 
disrespectfully in regard to his politics, 
which irritated him. 

Neddy used to strain our credulity by 
his yarn of how, when Ireland's crops 
failed, the land-owners imported corn on 
the cob, and the starving peasantry, mis- 
taking grains for bark, shelled them off 
and boiled the cob. He insisted that his 
family had thrived upon it, even as upon 
a bread-and-meat diet in America. 




Neddy McGuiro 



53 



THE PLAYMATES OF YESTERDAY. 

Oh, where are the playmates of yesterday, 

The fellows we knew in school? 
Oh, what has become of the studious one, 

And where, oh, where, is the fool? 
Oh, what has become of the orator, 

"Whose passion was to recite? 
And the bashful kid who could speak no piece 

Unless he succumbed to fright? 
Oh, what has become of the model boy. 

Who was always the teacher's pet? 
And where, oh, where, is the tough young nut, 

The one we can never forget? 
The studious one, so we have been told. 

Is driving a hack these days ; 
While the fool owns stock in a bank or two. 

And a railroad that always pays. 
The orator that we knew so well 

Is clerk in a dry-goods store ; 
While the bashful kid we knew has been 

In Congress ten years or more. 
The model boy is behind the bars 

For stealing a neighbor's cow. 
And you ask what of the tough young nut? 

Oh, he's a preacher now. 

■ — Anonymous. 



54 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Bells of Greendale, the Grave- 
digger, AND THE Town Painter 
AND Band Room. 

ACROSS from the Catholic Church we 
halted for a moment on the little 
space dear to the heart of every boy in 
town. There it was that great public 
events were celebrated, political or other- 
wise. There bonfires blazed when parti- 
san jollifications or rallies were held, and 
there the spellbinders of the day held 
their crowds. There, too, the watchfires 
of liberty burned on the Fourth of July. 

I remember how, the night before Cen- 
tennial Day in 1876, ^'Skinny" and I 
stayed up until the stroke of twelve to 
ring the old academy bell, and blend its 
chimes with those of the bells of the court- 
house and the churches. 

The old town's bells, indeed, are unfor- 
gettable. I can hear them now in my 

55 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

dreams, and I believe that every small- 
town boy has similar recollections. Each 
bell had its own peculiar sound. 

First, as dawn broke, came the solemn 
tolling of the Catholic Church bell, sum- 
moning the parishioners 
to early mass. Then there 
were school-bells — first, 
second and third. They 
did not toll, for the Senior 
boys who rang them had 
not learned the trick, but 
Bells they always said, at least 

they did to me, ''Come, 
gnis — Come, boys." 

We had a rule, then, that the doors 
were closed for five minutes after the last 
stroke, and those who came late had to 
face the principal. Classmates, too, were 
privileged to laugh as they found their 
way to their seats. Tardy marks on con- 
duct cards meant something when parents 
had to sign them. 

At nine o'clock the courthouse bell 
called judge, jurymen, lawyers, witnesses 
and court officers to their places, and 
tragedy or comedy began. At noon again, 

56 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

as we played our several ways home, the 
cheerful sound of farmhouse bells, rung 
as dinner warning for hired men, came 
from afar. Those bells, I know now, had 
an appeal more than purely physical, 
when softened by distance. 

After dinner the schoolhouse and court- 
house bells rang again, and every Wednes- 
day evening the church bells called Chris- 
tian folk to Aveekly prayer-meeting. 

But boys liked best the fire-bell when 
it clanged out on stormy nights, and they 
scrambled into their clothes and raced to 
the old fire-engine house to help the first 
arrivals haul out old ''Pat Lion" and 
''Good Will," the hand-pumped, hand- 
propelled fire-engine and run it to the 
place where a human bucket brigade was 
forming. Their pistons were always 
frozen in the winter-time, and hot water 
from the nearest home was usually in de- 
mand until the fire was out. 

One of the advantages of fire in the old 
town was that the women folk made it a 
point to supply the fire-fighters with 
coffee and sandwiches, and the boys never 
failed to get their share, and more. 

57 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

And no boy from that town could for- 
get the bells of Christmas eve, which an- 
nounced the annual Sunday-school parties, 
or those of New Year's eve, which hailed 
the new year. Oddly enough, they mean 
more to me in memory than ever they did 
then. 

Next was the old cemetery, whose 
white gravestones, weather-beaten, always 
stirred the thoughts of childhood and 
roused the passer-by to gloomy medita- 
tion. It seemed, at dusk, that all the 
stones leaned toward you, perhaps because 
the prevailing winds were westerly and 
the frost helped. 

The man who coined the phrase about 
^'whistling to keep one's courage up" 
spoke truth. I never passed that spot at 
dusk or after without doing just that most 
resolutely. 

Just beyond the church was the new 
cemetery and the new grave of Daisy 
Lawrence. The flowers lay still, un- 
withered, on the mound. 

A dwarfed, ill-favored, misshapen man, 
nearly as broad as tall, was wielding pick 
and shovel near by, as it seemed he 

58 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




Passing Cemetery 

always was. To me, as I look back, he 
was always digging, making graves or 
filling them. I have heard him at night, 
and the dull glow of his lantern and the 
muffled sound of his pick 
always frightened me. 
Whistling would not 
serve then. I ran. 

Gary Maynes was the 
sexton, but the whole 
town called him 
"Grround-hog," not only 
to designate his calling, 
but to distinguish him 
from the other Maynes 
of the town. 

Just then we met Bill Walters, the 
town house painter, and he, too, was a 
melancholy soul. He had ideas — advanced 

59 




"Ground-hog" 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

ones — about color schemes, but he could 
never get them accepted. 

Bill had just one talk for a prospective 
customer, and it always ran like this: 

*'My dear man, my dear man, if you'll 
only let me use my judgment in choosing 
your color scheme, I will guarantee to 
please you. 

''You 're all wrong when you want the 
body red and the trimming yellow. It's 
against nature's harmony. Now, my 
scheme is simple. 

''Why not call your colonial house a 
Avhite rose, and give it green petals and a 
green stem and green leaves? Then you'd 
have something." 

But Bill could never convert a cus- 
tomer, and the old town was painted every 
color and every combination of colors. 

I suspect, now, that, despite his ec- 
centricities, he was an artist at heart, 
a man who dreamed of a model village, 
though he lacked the ability to make 
others visualize that dream. 

Starting down the hill, we crossed the 
street to climb upon the Fliggers' stone 
wall, a mural wonder ten feet high, which 

60 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




Fliggexs' Stone Wall 



seemed to us an engineering marvel com- 
parable to the great wall of China. The 
top of that wall offered weary travelers 
who were not too weary to climb a haven 
of retreat. It was a favored refuge, too, 
for lovers, for the spreading branches of 
great maples came low over it. 

We sat down to watch the strutting 
peafowl in the Marchant yard until an 
Irish terrier, owned by the Misses Flig- 
gers, discovered our presence. His fran- 
tic snarling and barking brought out his 
mistresses, who lived alone, and we had 
learned that old maids did not approve of 
small-boy trespassers. 

We always wished, in those days, that 
some time they would close the house and 
go on a visit, if only that we might play 
at will on that great wall, and have a good 
look at the big thermometer beside the 

61 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

front doorway. It was the only big one 
of its kind in town. 

We cut across the street, as always, to 
\isit the hook-and-ladder house, and made 
our way in. We climbed over the appa- 
ratus assembled there, hoping against 
hope that a fire might break out with us 
on the job, and then, removing a loose 
board in the wall, crept into the dingy 
little back room, which, for many years, 
was the rehearsal headquarters for the 
toAvn band. 

There could be no more untidy place. 
Tobacco quids and peanut shells, stubs of 
stogies and tobacco ashes, burned matches, 
old paper and dried apple cores lay every- 
where. The furnishings were only 
wooden benches, an old table and some 
rickety chairs, the latter much mutilated 
by penknives. 

There was cheap and overornate paper 
on the stained walls, and lithographs of 
shapely, but none too warmly dressed, 
actress folk. 

No small-town boy forgets that night 
of nights on which the town band re- 
hearsed; how furtively he stole from 

62 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

home, raced down the street, mounted the 
side steps, and gazed with admiration into 
the room where the boys were practicing 
their No. 11, 16 or 5, keeping time with 
their feet, and watching gravely the per- 
formances of Prof. Harry Dunspaugh, 
band leader, and the best all-ronnd musi- 
cian the town had known. 

There is a Prof. Harry Dunspaugh in 
every community, and he deserves well 
of it. Every one of them has supplied, 
however unwittingly, the inspiration to 
patriotism and good citizenship, and he 
has won the admiration of every boy. I 
never knew a bandmaster whose reward 
was not less than his deserts. 



63 



CHAPTER VII. 



The Church Janitor, Railroad Detec- 
tive AND "The Haunted House." 

WHEN we left the bandroom and 
crossed the street, we met old 
Uncle Lewis, the colored janitor of the 
Episcopal Church. While 
we were talking to him the 
doors were flung open, and 
his pretty little daughter 
Zella came tripping out. She 
was so fair and comely, so 
like our own white girls, that 
in my verdant days I could 
never comprehend how she 
could be a colored girl. Some 
boisterous youths, compris- 
ing the "Ludwick Grang," on 
their way from the depot to root for the 
old Westmoreland ball team, came march- 
ing up the street. They were attended 
by "Billy the Bum,'' a nondescript and 

65 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 



nomadic character, friend neither to labor 
nor water, and wearing enough clothing 
at this time of year to keep an Arctic 
explorer warm. 

While we were having a look into 
*'01d Man" Earle's book-binding estab- 
lishment, which he conducted 
with the aid of his sons, we saw 
Frank Strongs — who w^as an as- 
sistant Pennsylvania Railroad's 
detective — on his way to meet 
the 9:16 train, and to his post 
of duty at the top of the station 
steps. 

I have dropped into the old 
town once in awhile within the 
last thirty years, and never yet 
have failed to find Frank at his 
accustomed place at the top of the depot 
steps. On one of these occasions I shook 
hands with him, and inquired about some 
of the old townspeople. 

''What has become of 'Old Tommy 
McCabe,' the railroad track-walker?" I 
asked. "Oh," said Frank, "he's dead — 
died of rheumatism." "Well, what of 
Robert Turner, the station agent T' 

66 




Frank Strong 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



^'Dead," Frank answered; ''died of heart 
trouble." "And old Mr. Dehalt, the hotel 
man*?" *'Dead, too," Frank continued; 
"blood poisoning." "Well, that's too 
bad," I said; "I'm sorry to hear of their 
deaths. But what has become of 'Skillet 
Breaker' Maynes, the same that you 
used to call 'Old Blowhoru'l" "Gone, 
too," Frank an- 

"Deadl" I 

"No, not 
Frank ex- 

"He didn't 

die. They 
just merely poured 
him back into the 
bottle again." 

Just down the side street on which the 
band's headquarters fronted, behind a row 
of majestic maples which kept the grave- 
yard's secrets, was the deserted little house 
of evil report, haunted, as some house in 
every little town must be. The old town 
called it, sometimes, "The House of 
Fear, ' ' a mouth-filling title enough, largely 
because of the amazing story which Jim 
Green, black porter at the neighboring 

67 



swered. 

asked. 

that,'^ 

plained. 

exactly 




'Skillet Breaker" Maynes 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

hotel, told of an experience he claimed to 
have had there. 

Sometimes we boys could get Jim to 
tell the story, and he told it well — always 
in whispers, with much mystery. A 
traveling salesman, he said, had promised 
him five dollars if he would spend a night 
there, so Jim set out at ten in the evening 
with a lantern, and, stumbling through the 
bushes in the wilderness of a front yard, 
made his way into the parlor, and sat 
down on the floor with the lantern beside 
him. 

**An' then I heerd a squakety-like 
noise, an' I dassent to look ^round," Jim 
would say. ''An' I wishet I was home 
in bed. An' then my heart beat like the 
bigges' drum in Marse Harry Duns- 
paugh's band, an' I felt somethin' purrin' 
against my back, an' then the bigges' 
black cat I ever see brushed against my 
goose flesh, an' walked right up to that 
lantern, an' curled 'round it, an' went 
faster an' faster. An' his tail kept gittin' 
bigger an' bigger, an' his eyes were like 
headlights on the Pennsylvania aingines, 
an' I didn't need that lantern none. 

68 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



"All of a sudden that cat stops short, 
an' he shoves up his back as high as my 
haid, an' his tail gets loike a feather 
duster, an' he pushes his face right 
against mine an' he says: 

'' 'Jim, you and I is all alone heah.' 

"An' I says: 'Doan let that worry you. 
I's gwine to leave right now.' 

"An' I lef ', an' when I fell down in the 
tin cans an' bushes in that front yard, a 
big buck nigger is there, an' he says to 
me, 'Jim, you sho'ly am a fas' runner,' an 
I see he had the haid of a gray-haired 
white man under his arm, an' I says, 'Sir, 
1 ain't begun to run yet,' an' I didn't stop 
till I got to the feed stable back of the 
hotel, an' slam de door." 

We used to believe that story, and Jim 
told it so often that I'm sure he did too. 



69 



CHAPTER VIII. 

"Slop" Marshall, Billposter Stump, 
ET Al. 



THE next citizen — I had almost said 
institution — to claim our greetings 
and our interest was "Slop" Marshall, the 
town scavenger. There 
were, of course, others 
of similar occupation, 
but they performed no 
useful function like to 
his, for they trafficked 
only in gossip and scan- 
dal. 

"Slop" carried the 
waste from the old town's kitchens to his 
hogs, housed in store-box shacks under 
the cemetery hill, and the unsavory odors 
of his establishment assured him the re- 
quired privacy for his peculiar methods 
of slaughtering his swine and manufac- 
turing horseradish. 

71 




"Slop" Marshall 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Moreover, he was the town seer and 
necromancer, always prophesying and 
always explaining the failure of his proph- 
ecies. One who pretends a mastery of 
the occult is always fascinating to boys. 

''Slop" Marshall believed the cure for 
human ills to lie in a pocketful of what he 
called scarabs — flat, polished, oval sub- 
stances like seashore pebbles. And he 
claimed the power to make them work for 
him. To him, indeed, the ''scarab" was 
the sought-for philosopher's stone, which 
might cure warts, wens and goiters, rheu- 
matism and kindred ailments. 

Once, though, "Slop" confided to me 
that his "scarabs" were nothing more 
than Irish potatoes, carried in the pocket 
until they shrank and dried and took from 
dirty hands the desired polish. Of course, 
I tried his recipe, and, despite the ridi- 
cule of parents, brothers, sisters and 
friends, I carried a big potato in my 
pocket. It shrank, at last, to the dimen- 
sions of "Slop's" "scarabs," and its firm- 
ness, contours and polish corresponded. 
What ills it spared me I have never 
known. 

72 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




We bade Marshall our boyish good 
morning, just as John Martin Luther 
Stump — ^we called him John 
Martin Luther Buffalo Bill 
Poster Stump — ^hailed us 
from across the street with 
the offer of a job. He- was 
the town bill-poster and news 
magnate, and he wanted help 
in distributing, hand-bills. 
We could have had gallery 
seats for our work, but we 
knew our parents might not 
approve the show, and, be- 
sides, it was our busy day. 

Next, on the steps of the Tourner 
home, we waved to pretty Ella Tourner, 
chatting with Professor McConville, the 
new schoolteacher, and peeped over the 
great stone wall before Governor Latta's 
home to pass the time of day with Maude 
and Bertie Latta, whom we thought fairer 
than any of the flowers to be found in the 
great yard. 

Across the street old Sammy Stump 
was raising a dust as he swept down the 
steps of the Reformed Church. 

73 



John Martin Lu- 
ther Stump 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Doctor Towne, the first and only home- 
opathic physician in the old town, came 
tiptoeing out of his office next door, and 
hastened up the street in his unmistak- 
able, quiet, ladylike way. He seemed to 
us always a peaceable, timid sort, but he 
had weathered the violent op- 
position of his allopathic breth- 
ren, even as, in more recent 
years, the scientists (so called), 
the osteopaths, the electrother- 
apists and chiropractors have 
managed to survive. 

"Of thee I sing. 
Land where my fathers died, 
Land of the Pilgrims' pride, 
From every mountain-side 
Doctor Towne Lg^ freedom ring." 

^'RoU" Patterson, the carpenter, was 
singing in his big, clear voice from the 
roof of Judge Logan's house, and he set 
us whistling. ^'Roll" led the Methodist 
Church choir, and he always sang at his 
work. You could hear him for half a 
block. His cheerfulness and his recog- 
nized strength and fineness of character 
Avere known all round about the old town. 

74 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 




Jim Biggs 

But we hurried on — past Widow 
Eagan's home (she who was kill- joy to 
the boys, because she always put ashes 
on their coasting-course), and 
met Jim Biggs, green-goggled, 
weak-eyed, doddering, driving 
his plodding gray horse and 
two-wheeled cart filled with 
limestone chunks for street 
repair. 

The crew that followed 
Jim might have been recruited 
from the Old Men's Home. 
There was San Zimmerman, 
the boss, directing stiff-legged 
Tommy Gill, Corporal Hock, old and halt 
and big, and peg-legged Johnny Quinn. 

75 




Tommy CKU 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




Peg-legged Jolinny 
Quinn 



Any day from early spring to late fall 
one might find this gang on the streets, 
always busy. 

Corporal Hock, rugged 

A'(*y^' >^^ and of the most soldierly 
i i \ bearing, was the old town's 
hero. Back in the thirties, 
when a young daredevil, 
he had gone down to Texas, 
joined Gen. Sam Houston's 
band, had a share in the 
battle of San Jacinto, seen 
the capture of Santa Ana. 
He came home in time to 
tell strange stories of the old Southwest, 
of thrilling exploits in Texas and Old 
Mexico and of the trials 
and sufferings, discour- 
agements and triumphs, 
of the little group of 
patriots who made Texas 
truly American. His 
story proved the inspi- %!^'i^ 
ration which sent many corporal Hock 

of the young men of the 
town to enlist in the real Mexican War a 
few years later. 

76 




. MY OWN MAIN STREET 

This was the section of the old street 
where the lawyers and the 'squires had 
their offices. Attorney Joseph Johns 
was standing in front of his, eagerly read- 
ing the Pittsburgh paper. Which re-j 
minds me — 

In those days a Chicago broker cor- 
nered the wheat market, and boosted 
prices from 65 cents to 70, from 70 to 80, 
and at last to the dollar mark for the first 
time in American history. Every one in 
the old town, and, I suppose, in the 
country, was talking of dollar wheat. 
Johns read of it as he stood in front of his 
office, just as on my day of days. 

Just then Chris Crisby came hobbling 
up the street, with a little American flag 
pinned on his coat lapel. Crisby had seen 
many ups and downs in life — mostly 
downs. He was a member of many lodges, 
from most of which he received financial 
aid and other material assistance. He was 
just the man to whom dollar wheat 
meant all loss and no gain. He stepped 
up to Lawyer Johns. 

'Moe," he said, ''I am feeling mighty 
proud this morning, and I wear this flag 

77 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 



of red, white and blue in honor of dollar 
wheat. ' ' 

Lawyer Johns looked him up and 
down. 

^' Chris," said he ''you remind me of 
Benedict Arnold, when I think of your 
family. He called his attendants, when he 
came to die, and asked them to bury him 
in the American flag. Dollar wheat means 
about as much to you as the flag, did to 
Arnold. ' ' 

Crisby at once hobbled away from 
there. 

We might have stopped, then, to play 
ball in the street with Gleary Logan and 
Danny Carpenter, but we preferred some 
"Indian cigars" which "Skinny" brought 
down from the catalpa-trees in front of 
the Armstrong and Singer homes. 

Old 'Squire Carpenter sat in the big 
armchair before his office, fanning the flies 
with a palm-leaf. He watched "Spider" 
Weinsheimer coaxing little black Lewis 
Mmmey to sing. We paused to listen. 

Lewis sang "My Old Kentucky 
Home," and sang it well. I wonder, now, 
how that little Lew, who sang there in 

78 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

the sunlight, could have come, years after- 
ward, to poison his parents. 

He died in the Pennsylvania State 
Prison. 

We crossed the street, the song, done, 
ostensibly to talk with Grandmother Gray, 
but really because we hoped for a glimpse 
of her pretty granddaughter Lizzie, who 
was the most attractive cross-eyed girl I 
ever hoped to see. The 
very imperfection in her 
vision enhanced her 
beauty. 

She wasn't there, but a 
dilapidated wagon, drawn 
by an animated skeleton 

Ben Myers 

01 a horse, urged to a 
snail's pace by the entreaties of the owner, 
claimed our attention. It was Ben Myers, 
the ragman, and he walked on the curb 
beside, bawling out in the tones every boy 
in town could mimic: 

"Cash for ra-a-a-a-a-g-g-s-s-s, o-o-ll 
ir-n, metal an' gold — if you gives 'em to 
me. Who's got any r-a-a-a-g-g-s-sl" and 
more of the same. 




79 



CHAPTER IX 

The Justice of the Peace, the Baker and 

Retired Farmer — The Town Square 

AND A Few Eccentric Citizens. 

ANOTHER justice of the peace — as the 
county-seat, our town had many of 
them — old 'Squire Detar, came meander- 
ing up the street as we quit Grandma 
Gray's. He saluted us as we halted before 
Kuth's confectionery and bakeshop, from 
the interior of which came an alluring 
fragrance. 

Kuth was the most irritable man in 
town, and every boy remembers the night 
we put tick-tacks on his windows. 

We had it arranged so that the heavy 
nail swung a foot or so below the upper 
sash, and the operating end of the string 
led across the street to the hole under 
'Squire Detar 's office. All evening long 
the elderly Kuth rushed furiously into the 
street, held animated converse with him- 

81 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

self, looked vainly up and down, and re- 
turned to Ms neglected business. 

Every boy in town was 
happy then. 

We halted for a moment 
to greet old Alex Trimble, 
who was the most persistent 
talker in town. Alex was a 
retired farmer, who had 
moved into town to end his 
days in comfort, and he had 
a phenomenal fund of big words, which he 
invariably misused. 

Alex was the man who once told a 
neighbor, who met him at the drugstore 
door, that he had just bought a piece of 
chemise (chamois) with which to polish 
his top buggy. Again, when a woman of 
the old town promenaded the main street 
leading a ridiculous little pug-dog he told 
his friends that his wife had always 
wanted ''one of them plug dogs, so she 
could go lemonading down the street." 
It's the truth whether you believe it 
or not. 

Here we came to what the old town 
called the Square — the intersection of the 

82 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



two principal streets, on which fronted 
McQuaid's Hotel, two grocery stores and 
"Hen" Welty's general store, which sold 
everything from toothpicks to hay- 
wagons. "Hen," indeed, was accustomed 
to boast that, given time, he 
could supply a customer with 
anything from a paper of 
pins to a horse or a threshing- 
machine. 

Before the McQuaid Hotel 
young, John McQuaid was 
parading back and forth in 
the uniform of his military 
school. We just had to admire 
him, he was such an upstand- 
ing sort of a fellow, and as 
we did so, a man, who always 
reminded me of a snapping-turtle, came 
out into the yard. 

It was James Porter Eanard, an ec- 
centric, who was indeed an institution in 
the old town. Kinard was always sam- 
pling whisky over the several bars of 
the corporation, and, whenever he was 
properly mellowed, he stopped all he met 
to tell them two stories, the only two he 

83 




John McQuaid 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

was ever known to tell. The better lie 
felt, the oftener he told the stories. 

They were old then, and they are fifty 
years older now. The first concerned the 
time he got on the train at 
Eodebaugh Station, and pre- 
tended to go to sleep. When 
the conductor nudged him and 
demanded his ticket, the pas- 
senger blinked and protested 
that he had none. 

^'The conductor told me 
I'd have to get off at G-reen- 
dale,'' said Jimmy, with his 
snapping-turtle smile, ''and I 

James Porter . . 

Kinard told him that was jes' exactly 
where I wanted off." 

The other had to do with politics, and 
he pointed it according to the political 
faith of the auditor and his expectation 
of a drink. It was the story about getting 
stuck in a hole in a sycamore-tree after 
a rainstorm, and remembering that once 
he had voted the Democratic ticket. 

''I felt so small then,'' said Jimmy, 
''that I jes' naturally shriveled up and 
crawled out a knothole." 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

It was James Porter Kinard's boast 
that this story always won him the desired 
drink. 

Old Billy McQuaid was entertaining- 
guests and fellow-townsmen on the porch 
of his hotel, and in the bar-room ''Dutch" 
Chris, the ape-faced barber, whose fond- 
ness for the cornet, to the growing annoy- 
ance of the neighbors, was hurting his 
trade, gossiped with "Hi-Po-Lou" Myers, 
the gentlemanly barkeep. Neither was 
ever busy at that hour. 

Jake Kettering joined the group then. 

Jake — and every town has his like — 
was the "champeen fiddler'' of city and 
county and the mainstay of Newingham's 
Light Parlor Orchestra, which supplied 
music for the elite dances, as well as for 
the revels of maid-servants and their 
friends. 

In winter the maids held their dances 
in Cope's Hall, and in summer they ad- 
journed to Katty's Grove. We boys 
always thought it worth the journey to 
hear Jake play the violin, his heavy foot 
marking time, his strident voice cleaving 
the thick, acrid smoke and the confusion 

85 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

of the crowded hall as he bawled the 
changes in "Money Musk" and ''Vir- 
ginia Reel." 

He was a humorist by instinct, and his 
instructions to the dancers were always 
interlarded with jokes and jibes which 
put new energy into lagging feet. Men 
like Jake Kettering never live in vain. 
Their contributions to the gayety of life 
count for too much. 

He has been gone for thirty years, 
Avhere all good fiddlers go. 
QUADRILLE. 

Balance all around the hall, 

Salute your partner, eyes all bright. 

First couple out, and lead to the right, 

Ladies in the center, and gents all right. 

Two and four, and two come down, 

Gents in the corner and seven hands round. 

Do so do, around your beau — 

Gents sashay and ladies wait. 

Swing your partner off the floor, 

Swinging them like you're swinging on a gate. 

Quick grand change — 

Promenade all and bow to the floor. 

Ladies in center and hands all round, 

Boosters in center and four hands round, 

Ala man all 

Around the hall. 

86 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



In those da^^s the sanitary condition 
of the town was bad. There were no 
sewers; there was no water-supply sys- 
tem; people were absent-minded in their 
disposition of garbage, of ashes and ref- 
use, tin cans, old mackerel kits, discarded 
hoop-skirts. These things accumulated 
in every back yard. 

Every other family kept its horse or 
cow, pigs or chickens, and paid no atten- 
tion to the matter of cleanliness in stables 
or pens. A sour, com- 
pelling odor pervaded 
all parts of the town, a 
continuing offense to 
sensitive nostrils — and 
the filth bred innumer- 
able flies. 

McQuaid's Hotel 
was a great hatchery 
for flies, and Billy 
McQuaid's favorite outdoor sport was 
swatting them. His was a fearful and in- 
genious method. He would sit in his 
favorite chair on the broad porch, and 
allow the flies to hold convention on his 
right trouser leg, from hip to knee. Then 

87 




Billy McQuaid 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

down came his broad hand, and such flies 
as were imprisoned were rubbed up and 
down until crushed. 

Each fly convention was larger than 
the one before — ten flies coming to each 
funeral, as the saying ran — and old Billy 
spent hours in this unlovely sport. When 
he walked abroad the sunligjit glistened 
upon the lethal spots. 

Those were the dsijs, indeed, when the 
fly was the bane of the housewife, and her 
efforts to keep them — not from the house, 
but from the food — were futile and unend- 
ing. Every house had its fly-swatters — 
strips of paper bound to sticks — and be- 
fore each meal the mother or daughter or 
son would make the rounds of the dining- 
room, fluttering the papers and striving 
to drive out the pesky insects. And be- 
hind every picture were stuck great sprigs 
of asparagus, for we believed in those 
days that flies regarded asparagus sprays 
as the most desirable of resting-places. 

Already the old town's congress of 
^' Never Sweats" was in session at the cor- 
ners. The men who neither toiled nor 
spun, but who debated and analyzed and 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

reached decision on every State, national 
and world problem, were in early session, 
on curb, and bench, box and barrel. The 
village blacksmith held the floor. 

He may have been telling of George 
and the red-hot iron, of dollar wheat or 
President Grant's third term. It was all 
one. He had an audience. 

From Courthouse Alley came boys' 
voices shrieking ''Caw-caw-caw." Henry 
Frees, the ashman, was their butt. He 
came along the alley, swaying on his 
driver's seat behind his bone-yard horses, 
straightening up now and again to cut 
viciously at the team with a stubby whip, 
then wobbling as the wobbly-wheeled 
wagon wobbled, in defiance of all the laws 
of gravitation. ''Hen" was 
always pretty limber when 
he came out of the tavern, 
but none of us had seen the 
day — though we all looked 
forward to it — when he was 
catapulted from his throne. 

Just then the gypsies ^^y^^y 

crossed Main Street. They were here 
upon one of their annual visits. 

89 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

For some days a caravan of these 
wanderers had been encamped in Miller's 
Woods, east of Courthouse Square. As 
usual, these queer people did not fail to 
arouse the keenest interest among the 
boys and the loafers' congress. 

They looked like brigands, anyhow, 
and their vari-colored garments, draped 
in the Romany styles of generations past, 
made them still more outlandish. The 
black-eyed, black-haired women of the 
tribe wandered about, selling beads, offer- 
ing to tell fortunes while on pilgrimage, 
while the men folk, with violin and accor- 
dion, entertained the populace. The car- 
avan was on the move, but its professional 
horse-traders were out to fleece some one 
before they quit the town. 

The chief conveyance in the gypsy 
train was a gaudily painted covered wagon, 
representing a house on wheels, which 
was drawn by a pair of well-groomed 
horses, the pick of the herd, which pranced 
under glittering and bespangled harness- 
es. A strapping, swarthy fellow drove, 
and beside him sat a woman fit to be 
queen of the tribe. Behind, in the wagon- 

90 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

box, half a dozen half-clad youngsters 
were making merry. 

A brace of grayhounds, more wagons 
and a collection of horses, ponies and 
mules completed the train. 



91 



CHAPTER X. 

The Biggest Nose in Greendale — Marcus 

Candee, the Lawyer — Brown's 

Drugstore and Doc 

Anawalt. 

WE paused at the next alley to give 
right of way to little Johnny Wilt- 
rout, who came by with the little red cart 
which he trundled all day long through 
the byways and highways of the town. 
We passed the time of day with him, too, 
for we had just learned his occupation, 
which had long been a mystery to us. 
Johnny was at once coroner and under- 
taker to all the dogs and cats in town. 

"Big Jim" Wells stood in front of the 
''Argus" office talking to Jim Laird, 
assistant editor. Jim was a giant physic- 
ally, and he had real brains, but the town 
could never understand why, with all his 
talents, he tried, year in and year out, to 
consume several men's shares of ardent 

93 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




'mi ' 

Jim Wells 



spirits. Jim, indeed, admitted freely that 
lie was four or five barrels over into the 
other fellow's allowance. 

Jim had the largest, 
reddest, noisiest nose in 
town, a veritable ^'rum 
blossom," which bloomed 
by day like a General 
Jack rose, and by night, 
as the jest ran, had a 
phosphorescent glow. It 
was a cauliflower probos- 
cis, as famed in Westmoreland County as 
was Cyrano's in Gascony. Yet Jim's ex- 
cesses never dulled his wit. 

Once an inquisitive old maid — it would 
be neither prudent nor gracious to give 
her name — asked him what made his nose 
so red, and Jim retorted instantly: 

'^It is only blushing with pride at its 
decency in keeping out of other people's 
business." 

That night the whole town, from the 
loafers' congress to the congenial crew in 
McQu aid's bar-room, was laughing over 
Jim's response. His nose never lost its 
luster nor the jest its savor. 

94 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



Across the way a group of pretty girls 
edged toward the curb to give sea-room 
to Corrigan Whistler, the town cobbler, 
who had all sail spread, far more than 
three sheets in the wind, and whose lan- 
guage was that of Peter Simple's "Chips," 
the sea-going carpenter. On our side we 
made way for the old town's prototype of 
"Law^yer Marks," who required almost as 
much room to navigate. 

It was Marcus Candee, Esq., who had 
once written to the village editor, 
rebuking him mildly for omit- 
ting the "Esq." in some in- 
formal mention of his name. 
Candee was tall and straight, 
but shambling-gaited, and he al- 
ways appeared in pouter-pigeon 
white shirt, slightly soiled, small 
black tie, black frock coat and 
strapped trousers and chin whis- 
kers. He wore always a stove- 
pipe hat, so tall it seemed to 
rise to meet the sun. 

Marcus was a lawyer by pro- 
fession, a tippler by habit, and, by way 
of other distinction, Jim Borlin's star 

7 95 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

boarder. Borlin ran the Laird House; a 
whole-souled sort of a man, quick in his 
judgment of other men, and a rapid-fire 
talker. 

His good nature and his unfailing gen- 
erosity did not help him in his business. 
His hotel was always full of loafers, eat- 
ing his meals and occupying his rooms, 
and paying only by oral promises and 
scrawled I. O. U. 's. The old town recalled 
the day when Jim complained bitterly to 
a friend because of Candee's failure to 
pay. 

"Jim," was the response, "why do you 
let him hang around, then'?" 

"Just for his blarney, his blarney, his 
eternal blarney," was the reply. 

Next stood Brown's drugstore, and 
Brown's drugstore was always of interest 
to boys. There one might buy for a price 
licorice stick and licorice root, coughdrops 
and rock-candy, horehound stick candy, 
and, best of all, soda water. 

Brown kept the one soda fountain in 
town, a single, stationary, silver goose- 
neck siphon, set on a little white marble 
slab, and above it a glass sphere, the in- 

96 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

terior of which was automatically sprayed 
by the soda water. The device had a 
sizzling, but wintry, sound when in opera- 
tion. Flavors were limited to strawberr^^, 
lemon, vanilla and sarsaparilla, and the 
soda water was the plainest of soda water, 
but strong in effervescence. 

No boy, of that generation at least, can 
forget his first drink of soda water; how 
tenderly and shyly he held the big, silver- 
handled glass; how slowly and carefully 
he lifted it to his lips; how the bubbles 
broke to spray his nostrils and to make 
him sneeze with the first swallow; how 
the tears came, and after these the 
laughter. 

There was one other attraction at this 
store — the free almanacs which always 
interested the boys. The front cover 
always displayed a naked man, with his 
stomach cut open and his viscera exposed 
— ''innards," we always said — and about 
the margin were grotesque figures repre- 
senting the signs of the Zodiac. I can 
remember them still — Taurus, Gremini, 
Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn and the 
rest. 

97 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

And the almanac, along with its adver- 
tised cure-alls for every human ailment, 
was a sure cure for the blues. There were 
jokes innumerable, suggestions for cha- 
rades, riddles, puzzles, tricks, puns, short 
courses in legerdemain, ventriloquism, 
mesmerism. Of course, there were aston- 
ishing testimonials too. 

One thing about the old store always 
puzzled us. The professional men of the 
town passed frequently be- 
hind the prescription case, 
and they always came out 
wiping their moustaches, 
coughing and smelling of 
cardamons. 

Edwin Boice's general 
Edwin Boic© store was our next port of 
call, a quaint little place, 
with two steps leading to the entrance 
and one small display window filled with 
fruit-jars of old-fashioned stick candy, 
licorice, mixed confections, paper-covered 
kisses and penny cakes of maple sugar. 
We knew Edwin's penchant for old 
newspapers, which he used in wrapping 
packages, and hurried across the street to 

98 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Rock &j Rankin's cigar-store to get some. 
Before the store, of course, was a wooden 
Indian, hatchet in hand, big enough to 
frighten horses in the street. Rankin 
knew us, so we went back of the counter, 
collected a bundle of papers, folded them 
neatly, and returned to Boice's. We got 
four cents in trade, and, after sampling 
the cracker barrels, the little black 
prunes, dried currants and raisins, took 
four ''blind robins." 

On the way out we saw little Benny 
Dick, the tailor, sitting cross-legged in 
his shop across the way, plying, the needle 
busily. Dick, as we best remember him, 
was the proud possessor of a cow of 
wondrous size and shape, with head, tail 
and body of normal size, but legs so short 
that the body nearly touched the ground, 
and the tail dragging behind like a stabil- 
izer. 

Doctor Anawalt passed then, and 
chucked us each under the chin as he 
climbed into his buggy while Pat Condon, 
his driver, quieted the spirited horses 
worrying at their bits. Dr. Anawalt was 
physician to the old town's leading fam- 

99 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

ilies, a fastidious dresser, always in im- 
maculate linen, with boots most brightly 
l^olished. 

He was ostentatious in manner, with a 
dignified stride, but very moderate in his 
charges and altogether sympa- 
thetic, kind and devoted to his 
patients. What Irvin Cobb 
said of doctors in general — 
"he is with us when we come 
into the world and with us 
when we go out of it, often 
lending a helping hand on both 
occasions" — did not apply in 
its entirety to him. 

He radiated hopefulness ; 

Dr. Anawalt i • i • • j • 

his optimism was contagious, 
a mixture of faith and of imagination, 
which seemed to buoy up the spirits of his 
patients. He never pulled a long face; he 
did not deal in cautious, mournful words. 
His bitter medicines were always more 
effective than those of his less fortunate 
rivals. 



100 




THE VILLAGE DOCTOR. 

Along the village streets, where maples lean 

Together like old friends about the way, 
A faithful pair oft and anon were seen — 

He and his nag, both growing old and gray; 
What secrets lurked within the old soul's breast. 

Of mother-love, of throbs of pains and ills. 
All safely kept beneath that buttoned vest. 

Receptacle of powders and of pills. 
Thrice happy he when some fond mother's eyes 

Grew moist with love unspeakable to find 
Snugged to her breast her babe, whose paradise 

Within her soul and bosom were entwined. 
How oft he held the wrist to mark the slow 

Pulsations of the feebly fluttering heart. 
While his kind words, soft murmuring and low, 

Essayed to calm the mourner's pain and smart. 
He was to all a father, brother, friend ; 

Their joys were his, their sorrows were his own. 
He sleeps in peace where yonder willows bend 

Above the violets that kiss the stone. 

— Horace S. Keller, in New York Sun. 



101 



CHAPTER XI. 

Surveyor Clarke Warden and Thomas 
Barclay, the Banker. 

SEATED among the Oliver chilled 
plov^s, harrows and assorted farm im- 
plements which cluttered the front of 
Turney Brothers' hardware store were 
Clarke Warden and John Gaylord, who 
can not be slighted here. They were 
among the town's notables. 

Both were ^'Forty-niners," who had 
trekked to California in the days of the 
gold rush, and had brought back enough 
of yellow metal to keep them in comfort 
for the rest of their days. They brought 
back, too, enough good stories to last a 
generation. No less contented with his lot 
was Thomas Barclay, banker and Mexican 
War veteran, who sat in his brown linens 
on the front porch of his little bank, and 
hung his number twelves over the porch 
rail. 

103 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

I remember going once to Barclay's 
bank with my mother, at a time in the 
nation's history when gold was at a pre- 
mium. Mother had accumulated several 
hundred dollars in gold while living in 
the oil regions, and, now that gold coin 
was in demand, she thought to change 
it into paper and add to the family's 
available cash. 

Mr. Barclay was a big man physically, 
and he did everything in a big way, even 
to the raising of a big family. His little 
banking-room was barren of elaborate 
furnishings, equipped only with a plain 
deal table and a few cheap, but substan- 
tial, chairs. He kept his money in a little 
closet off the room. 

He counted out mother's gold, figured 
on the back of an envelope, explained in 
detail how much in greenbacks she would 
receive in exchange, and retired to his 
closet. He came out with a little wooden 
chest, which, as it seemed to me, contained 
about all the money in town. He counted 
out the bills, gave them to mother, and 
escorted us to the door. Still warmed by 
his cheerful good day, I looked back as 

104 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

we passed up the street. He had resumed 
his favorite posture, feet over the rail, 
as he might be seen every day from early 
spring to late fall. 

Clarke Warden f There were few men 
in the old town whose contributions to 
its life and thought were more valuable. 
Old-time schoolmaster, surveyor of repute, 
claim adjuster and expert on matters of 
railroad right of way, he had deserved 
prosperity, but his interest in material 
things was only casual. 

Warden had a hobby — astronomy. He 
seemed to have a personal affection for 
every star in the heavens. He was a true 
nature lover, too, and it was worth any 
boy's while, or man's, to stroll with him 
in the woods at any season, and to hear 
him name the trees and flowers, birds and 
animals, and to explain the intimate de- 
tails of their struggles for existence. He 
could interpret animal life, and such inter- 
pretation must interest every normal soul. 

Twenty years ago I had a share in 
building a new town and several miles of 
railway, and my men used in vain all their 
powers of persuasion to secure rights-of- 

105 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

way through two or three farms. We 
were almost ready for the courts when I 
thought of old Clarke Warden, and I sent 
for him. 

He was well on toward eighty, yet 
mentally and physically fit, and he re- 
sponded without delay. Within three 
days he was an accepted boarder of the 
most troublesome farmer in the rights-of- 
way squabble and within three days more 
he had closed the deal at a price satisfac- 
tory to every one concerned. 

At that time I had many opportunities 
to visit with him, and to drive him 
through the most beautiful parts of north- 
em Ohio, and often we were delayed far 
into the night. He had been the first per- 
son to interest me in the out-of-doors. He 
was the first, then, to show me the 
wonders of the stars, and make them real 
to me ; to name over the brighter and more 
notable of them, to tell the stories which 
belonged to them, and all this without 
excess of figures or fact or scientific 
learning. 

The interest he roused in me led to the 
exploration of bookstores as a preliminary 

106 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



to the exploration of the stars, and I 
found what I wanted. The first clear, 
cold November evening that I sat down 
to read, the desire to see what I had read 
about drove me outdoors continually, and 
I stalked the lawn looking for Sirius. The 
policeman on that beat, suspicious of my 
movement, watched me from behind a tree 
for half an hour and then threatened my 
arrest. I had trouble enough persuading 
him that I belonged in that yard and that 
house — and then he told me, politely 
enough, that he thought me crazy. 



107 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Station Store, Courthouse Square 
AND Nicknames. 

BUT back to the Main Street. 
'' Skinny" suggested that we go to 
the station and get some ice-cream, and 
the suggestion was enough. Jersey Tay- 
lor, who had driven us from his ice pond 
hours before, kept the little confectionery 
store at the station, and he alone dealt in 
ice-cream. His monopoly in ice, the arti- 
ficial product being unknown, gave him 
the advantage over every possible com- 
petitor. 

He controlled the oyster market also, 
and he was the first dealer to bring 
bananas to town, selling them at five cents 
apiece. It was a great day when first we 
boys got five cents together to buy one, 
and then divided it with slippery fingers 
to make it go around. Of course they 
were juicy morsels for us. 

109 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




Bail way Station 



We were glad to learn, as we ate our 
cream, that Jersey had not recognized us 
at the pond. He had a long memory. 

Holiday games were in full swing 
when we returned to the street. We were 
just at the north reach of Courthouse 

110 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



Square, and the wooden benches along the 
stone wall were filled by the usual Satur- 
day group of idlers. Just round the cor- 
ner Hare's photograph gallery was busy, 
as it always was on Saturday. 

Six boys made up the backbone of an 
''All On" game, contending, with six more 
"jumpers" on the other side. The ama- 
teurs all halted for the 
moment when Frank 
Buckalew Lohr, the town 
athlete, stopped to watch. 
He had just returned 
from a season tour with 
a one-ring circus, and, 
of course, his presence 
compelled respect. 

Then there were 
others busy at "Fox and 
Greese," "Bumblebee," 
"Lame Soldier," "Crack the Whip," 
"Blanke-Lie-Low," "Leap Frog," "Mum- 
blety Peg" and "King's Stick." Some of 
these games were good, clean sport, healthy 
for body and soul, but not all. When I 
remember the popularity of "Lame 

Soldier," and the role of the boy who was 
« 111 




Leap Frog 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

the ^'Stirrup," when I consider parts of 
^'Fox and Geese" as we played it, I can 
not but be less enthusiastic about some of 
the sports of childhood. 

And that reminds me of the celebrated 
ball game which the old Westmoreland 
ball club played at Adamsburg the day of 
the big fight. There was disagreement 
about the umpiring and the score, and be- 
fore the contest was over the town con- 
stable was forced to call upon the citizens 
to arrest the disturbers of the peace. 
These law-abiding citizens answered the 
call with alacrity, arrested several of the 
boys of our town, and that night shipped 
them back to Greendale. 

The trip was made with the boys 
locked in a butcher's wagon, their pale 
and troubled faces looking out through 
the apertures of a big calf-crate. They 
stayed in jail most of the next day, until 
friends or relatives could bail them out. 
This ball club boasted uniforms of muslin 
flagging, with stripes running up and 
down the legs and round the waist, 
and stars glistened in the seats of the 
trousers. 

112 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The boys who played these games, with 
few exceptions, had nicknames given them 
by fond and loving parents, or by brothers 
and sisters. Names thus given usually 
were conferred as a mark of respect or 
distinction. Not so the familiar names 
given to them by their boy companions 
and playmates. Derision or contempt 
usually prompted the designations given 
by the playmates, suggested by some out- 
standing incident in their early lives, or 
some unfortunate physical characteristic 
that stimulated the habits, associations or 
principal features of beast or bird. Boys 
were no respecters of rank or person in 
conferring these ''degrees," and usually 
the pseudo title clung to the youth, who 
bore it, closer than the baptismal name. 
Memory brings back a few of the nick- 
names of the boys in old Greendale fifty 
years ago, and some of the readers of 
these papers may have their own recollec- 
tion quickened by this impressive list. 

''Mushy" Seacrist, "Calamity" Wil- 
liams, "Beanie" Hutchinson, "Snaky" 
Weaver, "Baldy" Bierer, "Blow" Coshey, 
"Sucker" Thompson, "Obbie" McClellan, 

113 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

''China" Keenan, "Vinegar" Armstrong, 
"Darby" Bierer, "Con" Barclay, 
"Brophy" Ulam, "Towhead" Dick, "G-en- 
eral" Lyon, "Tit" Shrader, "Chickie" 
Hawk, "Dandy" Hill, "Dude" Fess, 
"Mffie" Grafe, "Monkey" Cline, "Buck" 
Fisher, "Sennie" Tumey, "Fatty" Robin- 
son, ' ' Red ' ' Denman, ' ' Shorty ' ' Butterfield, 
"Jap" Lohr, "King" Bomer, "Montie" 
Null, "Duke" Goldsmith, "Pee" Kilgore, 
"Greaser" McCall, "Doggie" Murphy, 
"Crow" Weinsheimer, "Muffie" Kline, 
"Ching" Johnston, "Eck" Guffey, "Zeb- 
bie" Detar, "Squibbs" Greer, "Captain" 
Shaw, "Moze" Allison, "Tucker" Reamer, 
"Motie" Turney, "Judge" Clarke, 
"Brud" McCausland. 

In cold print some of these names may 
appear to the casual reader to be vulgar; 
not so with the citizens of the "old burg" 
— none gave thought to vulgarity or re- 
vealed the least embarrassment in speak- 
ing the name of such boys as "Stinker" 
Dorn, "Tit" Shrader or "Pee" Kilgore. 
These boys were my playmates, and, 
ghostlike, their old familiar faces, peculi- 
arities and characteristics stand out be- 

114 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

fore me as I write their names. There 
is a life story in every name. Some have 
achieved great success; others died in 
glorious youth or early manhood — a few, 
alas! have traversed the path which led 
to destruction — yet to me they were the 
finest, squarest, whole-souled fellows I 
have ever known, and so shall they always 
be in my memory. 

The moments we spend in living over 
these mellowing adventures of youth re- 
pay us in hours of renewed ecstacy and 
spirit, for they reunite us with the dear 
old days of long ago. 

Well, some are in the churchyard laid, 

Some sleep beneath the sea, 
But none are left of our old class, 

Excepting you and me; 
And when our time shall come, Tom, 

And we are called to go, 
I hope we'll meet with those we loved 

Some forty years ago. 



115 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Old Songs, Political Marching 
Clubs and John Wells, Horse- 
trader, AND Others. 

The Camptown ladies sing this song, 

Duda, duda; 
The Camptown races five miles long, 

Duda, duda, day. 

THE games remind me of the old, old 
songs — songs we boys used to sing 
o' nights by way of serenade to none too 
tolerant citizens. We had always a fine 
assortment of ballads, popular in that 
generation. 

There were '^Suwanee River;" ''Bring 
Back My Bonnie to Me ; " ' ' Tenting on the 
Old Camp-ground;" ''Mocking-bird;" 
"Silver Threads Among the Gold;" "Hard 
Times Come Again No More;" "The Old 
Oaken Bucket;" "Ben Bolt;" "Annie 
Laurie;" "When the Corn Is Gently Wav- 
ing, Annie Dear;" "Good Night, Ladies;" 

117 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

"Glory, Glory, Hallelujah;" "Billy Boy;" 
"Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep;" 
"Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming;" 
"Roll On, Silver Moon;" "In the Evening 
by the Moonlight;" "Dixie;" "Marching 
through Georgia;" "Swing Low, Sweet 
Chariot;" "The Last Rose of Summer;" 
"Old Black Joe;" "Home, Sweet Home;" 
"Whoa, Emma, You Put Me in Quite a 
Dilemma;" "O Susanna;" "Nelly Bly," 
and no doubt a score more which my 
memory misses. 

And I believe that these deserved their 
popularity. Oddly enough, the songs of 
that generation do survive, as those of the 
past twenty years have failed to do. I 
would not undertake to guess the answer 
unless it be that the music was more de- 
serving. 

Most of the popular songs of the pres- 
ent generation are mere adaptations of 
Moody and Sankey hymns, translated 
into ragtime, and holding all the yearning 
of the gospel melody. The songs of our 
day were those, no doubt, which supplied 
the rhythms and the melodies for the 
revivalists. 

118 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

THE OLD SONGS. 
Will M. Maupin. 

Sweet songs of old! How memory brings 

Their music back to me 
Until each bell of heaven rings 

Salvation full and free ! 
'Joy to the world," the music sweet 

Has filled a million souls, 
And marked the time for marching feet 

To where old Jordan rolls. 

'I need Thee ev'ry hour," for I 

Oft weary by the way; 
And ''While the years are rolling by" 

Thou art my guide and stay. 
'Abide with me" through calm and stress, 

Protect me by Thy might ; 
My weak and fait 'ring footsteps bless 

With Thine own "Kindly light." 

The dear old songs ! Their echoes fill 

The quiet evening air ; 
They bid me bear life's load until 

"There'll be no sorrow there." 
'By cool Siloam's shady rill," 

Whose water floweth free, 
Lead me each day and night until 

"Nearer, my God, to Thee." 

And when "On Jordan's stormy banks" 

My feet shall stand at last; 
When I shall see the ransomed ranks 

From whom all care is cast — 
119 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

"O there may I, though vile as he" 
Christ did that day behold, 
The city's walls of jasper see 
And walk its streets of gold. 

The marching, clubs, somehow, seem in 
the same class. In those days every boy 
thought autumn wasted if he could not 
parade with those of his father's political 
faith. In those days, in Greendale, the 
Republicans and Democrats used to pa- 
rade on alternate nights, when campaign 
excitement grew high, each trying to 
outdo the other party in enthusiastic 
numbers. 

Every man or boy who could be per- 
suaded to tramp the dusty streets was 
pressed into service, supplied with a cap, 
a glistening oilcloth cape which rivaled 
Joseph's coat, white leggings and a vile- 
smelling torch bound on a stick as long 
as a broom-handle. They marched thus 
in squads and battalions, headed by gaily 
uniformed bands or drum corps, torches 
flaming and everybody shouting himself 
hoarse. 

These torches were stored always in 
the courthouse basement, where they con- 

120 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

tributed much to the general fire risk. 
There were such clubs in every town and 
village, and they traveled from town to 
town to participate in this or that political 
rally or celebration, often blocking the 
railway yards with the denseness of the 
traf&c. Campaigns were real fun in those 
days. 

To-day, with every voter card-indexed, 
Avith the vote by ward and precinct tabu- 
lated as a basis for estimate and endeavor, 
politics has lost its charm. 

''Skinny" and I stopped next to play 
audience at a political debate staged on 
the curb by 'Squire Marsh, Lawyer Dave 
Harvey and John Wells, horse-dealer and 
all-round sportsman. They shifted their 
places as little Oliver Sarvey, bell-boy for 
Andy Bovard's hotel, swept off the front 
walk. 

John Wells was the most interesting 
of the three, so far as we were concerned. 
He was a strapping, husky-whiskered, un- 
gainly soul, with an absorbing delight in 
draw poker. But it never worried his 
wife. 

121 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

A woman of the neighborhood com- 
plained once to Mary Wells that her hus- 
band had lost his night key late one night, 
and had roused the family by bawling out 
for some one to let him in. 

''Indeed," said Mrs. Wells, ''and that 
would never bother me. John never car- 
ried a night key. He does not need one, 
for some of us are always up when he 
comes home, and breakfast ready." 

The story ran that John came home 
one morning with his beard, shirt front 
and coat much stained with tobacco juice, 
and responded to his wife's questioning 
by the illuminating statement that the 
cuspidor had been behind him, and that 
"those fellows I played with knew how 
to play poker." 

A farmer from Crab Creek Valley 
bolted down the stairway from Doctor 
Fisher's office, and almost ran over us in 
his haste to get to the drugstore. The 
town doctors were dentists in those days, 
as well as general practitioners, and this 
farmer was spending his week-end hav- 
ing his teeth drawn, as a preliminary to 
the installation of a new set. 

122 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The druggist led him behind the pre- 
scription counter and gave him something 
to relieve the pain, along with a stiff drink 
of brandy. 

There was no real dentistry then, at 
least in towns of that size. When teeth 
began to go, the doctor removed them by 
strong-arm methods, using forceps of 
alarming weight and size. There were 
no local anaesthetics in those days. Who- 
ever had a toothache must grin and bear 
it, or get himself supplied with those of 
the synthetic type. 

We turned in at Amos Steck's book- 
store to look over the yellow-backed dime 
novels — the ''Skinny, the Tin Peddler," 
and "Jack Harkaway" series. Will 
AYeaver, the clerk, slipped behind me, and 
held a lighted stogie to the back of my 
neck, and then asked me a question. 

Of course, I stepped back, and got a 
nice, round blister as a token of his friend- 
liness. We went away from there quickly, 
and slipped in at old Jaroslowsky's cloth- 
ing-store. We did not go past the door. 

The old merchant had never managed 
to make friends with the boys of the com- 

123 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



munity. We always made it a point to 
stick our heads in at the doorway and to 
yell, "Jaros One Cent," assured that the 
words would bring the desired result. 

As we raced down the street, the old 
man hurried to the sidewalk to shake his 
fist at our retreating figures. Once we 
had so angered him that he pursued us for 
a block. On the way back, meeting Jake 
Hacke, he complained volubly: 

*^Dot iss a bad lot of poys, und der 
Congressman's poy iss d' vorst of d' lot." 

We had another way of teasing the 
old man. When we could find a boy green 
enough to run the risk, we used to give him 
a three-cent piece and send him to buy 
some ''ready-made buttonholes." He usu- 
ally came out much wiser, for old Jaros 
would catapult him out into the street to 
the accompaniment of staccato impreca- 
tions. 



124 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Courthouse, the Gravestone Cut- 
ters, "The Lallapaloosa," et Al. 

WE never passed the town pump in 
courthouse yard without stopping 
for a drink. 

There were no individual drinking- 
cups in those days, for that generation had 
never heard of germs. We drank, instead, 
from a great tincup, chained to the pump 
handle, and never worried at all. Almost 
every boy and girl had a little bag of cam- 
phor and assafoetida tied about the neck, 
anyway, and that seemed insurance 
enough. We have all noticed how, when 
Spanish influenza spread like a medieval 
pestilence over the country, the mothers 
who were small girls forty years ago 
trusted again to that household preventive. 

Court was in session, and what boy 
could pass the courthouse without looking 
in? We climbed the steps where Senator 

125 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Edward Cowan was telling Ms latest story 
to a group of fellow-lawyers. It was said 
of the Senator that he would stop a law- 
suit any time to tell a story. 

That day the courtroom was filled with 
witnesses and spectators, and Judge Logan 
was on the bench. Behind him on the 
wall hung a life-size painting of a sad- 
faced woman, blindfolded and thinly clad. 
She held a pair of scales, which balanced 
none too well, the emblem of justice. 
There were other decorations hardly less 
amusing to irreverent boys — portraits of 
austere, funereal-looking old chaps, for- 
gotten judges. Each held in his hands 
a scroll, which made one think they 
might carry tuberoses. There were por- 
traits, too, of Daniel Webster, Henry 
Clay and other patron saints of the 
American bar. 

We slipped into the back seats just 
as court opened. It was worth watching. 

Court Crier Gleorge Weinsheimer 
strode to the rail which separated com- 
mon folk from the lawyers, and shouted 
in a tone that disturbed the courtroom 
dust and the portraits of the fathers: 

126 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

''Oh, yezz, oh, yezz — this Honorable 
Court is now open. Gentlemen of the 
jury will please draw near and answer 
when their names are called, then step 
forward to the bar." 

Tommy Poulson and Dave Weaver, 
war veterans and tipstaffs to the court, 
seated comfortably and conspicuously in 
the front row of the courtroom, arose, 
shook their walking-sticks mechanically, 
and cried in union: 

''Order in the court. Order in the 
court. ' ' 

They never failed to do just that at 
the opening of court. 

The clerk having called the roll of 
jurors, and each having received sup- 
plementary directions from the court 
crier to "step forward to the box," the 
oath of of&ce was administered with a 
speed and a mechanical finish that left 
no impression whatsoever on anybody's 
mind. It was years before I ever learned 
that rigmarole which he recited so 
readily. 

In those days the oath was adminis- 
tered as follows: 

9 127 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

''You and each of you do solemnly 
swear, in the presence of almighty God, 
that you will well and truly try the mat- 
ters in this case and give a true verdict, 
according to the evidence, so help you 
God." 

The formal swearing of the witness 
took this form: 

The clerk addressed the witness with 
the old question, ''How do you swear 'r' 
and the witness, standing, would either 
express desire to af&rm or swear, and hold 
up his right hand while the clerk pro- 
ceeded: 

"Do you solemnly swear, in the pres- 
ence of almighty God, the searcher of all 
hearts, that the testimony you shall give 
to the court and jury in this case shall be 
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth as you shall answer to God 
in the last great day?" 

Little Alfie Smith, the court page, was 
flitting back and forth, carrying books and 
messages for the judge and the attorneys. 
We admired them, for the Hon. Henry D. 
Foster and "Beardy" Seward were both 
noted men and great lawyers in their day. 

128 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




"Beardy" Seward 



^'Were 



We remembered the story, as every- 
body did, telling of the time* when 
''Beardy" was examining a 
German witness with a view 
of determining to what ex- 
tent the defendant in the 
case was under the influence 
of liquor. The witness was 
perfectly sure the aforesaid 
defendant was not drunk. 

''How do you knowT' 
questioned "Beardy," sharply, 
you ever drunk?" 

"No, sir-r, I nefer was." 

"How many can you drink without 
getting drunk"?" thundered "Beardy," 
thrusting his face close to the face of the 
witness. 

"How many vot you means'?" was the 
naive response. "Kegs'?" 

That witness was excused. 

We did not wait to hear the case. We 
knew what lawsuits sounded like, and we 
knew, too, how court was closed. It was 
not worth our while to wait until Court 
Crier Weinsheimer hammered again Avith 
his gavel, and loudly announced: 

129 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

"Oh, yezz, oh, yezz, this court is now 
adjourned until half -past nine Monday 
morning. God save the judge, the attor- 
neys in this case, the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania, and all the jury.'' The call 
was always the same. 

In those days men wore whiskers, and 
the face smooth shaven was rare indeed. 




Jnst WUskeis 



And the whiskers were luxuriant — full 
beards, '^Burnsides" (named after the 
general) , imperials. The men with beards 
seldom thought neckties necessary, and I 
often looked forward to the time when I, 
too, could economize on scarves and bar- 
bering; on laundered shirts, even. George 
Ade was surely right when he set down 
the thought that "a man might be born 
with a hair lip or a club foot, but his whis- 
kers were his own." 

130 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

For many years the big courtroom was 
the largest hall in town, and, naturally, 
the preferred setting for amateur theatri- 
cals, and for the county institutes. 

Once I attended there an entertain- 
ment by Signor Blitz, mesmerist and pres- 
tidigitator, who gave the finest exhibition 
of slight-of-hand and hypnotism, supple- 
mented by the performances of trained 
birds, that I have ever seen. There, too, 
1 saw the great actress, Mme. Janauschek, 
and heard Francis Murphy, temperance 
lecturer, make an impassioned appeal for 
the signing of the pledge. 

On these occasions, when we lacked 
the price of admission, it was the custom 
of the boys to club together for a single 
admission, and to send the first of the 
gang into the hall. This boy, as the room 
filled, would quietly raise a window and 
sit in it while another climbed through the 
outer lobby window to the roof of the 
south porch — startling the martens and 
pigeons from their roosts — and crawled 
along the foot-wide coping which some 
forgotten architect had extended around 
the building. There was a bad right angle 

132 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

to turn, when the youngster risked a 
thirty-foot drop to the pavement below, 
but past that turn it was easy to reach the 
open window. 

The saying ran then, as now, that a 
kind Providence watches over small boys 
and drunken men — and I can believe it. 
We boys were accustomed to tread that 
coping and to hop freight trains when 
chance afforded, but our greatest risk was 
in coasting on Academy Hill. 

Six or seven to the bob, we Avould start 
at the crest and scoot right down the cen- 
ter of Main Street, flashing past fright- 
ened horses, wagons and farm sleds, past 
street intersection after intersection, to 
make an astonishing right-angle turn into 
Pittsburgh Street, and again downgrade 
past Kepler's carriage factory at the 
Jack's Run bridge. 

A Bridge of Sighs — such structures 
are always called that — led from the court- 
house over Jail Alley to the two-story 
out-building beyond. When one contrasts 
the cleanly, white-enameled conveniences 
of the public buildings of to-day, one can 
but admire the fortitude of the fathers. 

133 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




Poor old Pete, the courthouse janitor, 
always ''did his derndest" to keep the 
premises clean, but his was an uphill pull. 
Pete was crippled of body and 
soured of soul. He was a big 
man, and he had a palsied leg, 
which he lifted or dragged 
along, two skips to the normal 
step of the good limb; and we 
boys, after the heartless manner 
of our kind, called him ''Step- 
and-a-half." But we never 
badgered him if we found our- 
selves within his reach. His 
was of an uncertain temper. 
As we left the courthouse, we passed 
''Big Jim" Carpenter, counselor at law, 
who was describing the eccentricities of 
a farmer client to a friend. The client, 
according to the yarn, could not agree 
with his wife's relatives. When they 
came to visit he took to the chicken-coop, 
as a matter of course, and lived there until 
they left, maintaining that "it wasn't 
warm, but it was peaceable." 

The man, said "Big Jim," was so close 
that he would eat nothing but eggs while 

134 



Old Pete 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

his wife's family was about. Eggs, I 
should add, were three dozen for a quarter 
in those days. 

*' Skinny" and I heard this story, and 
then climbed the iron railing which sur- 
mounted the courthouse wall to look into 
the street. Loughrey Brothers, the town 
tombstone-cutters, were driving by with 
a load of headstones; their fat, red- 
cheeked little apprentices, ''Stinker'' 
Dorn and ''Flop" Turney, perched like 
harpies on top of the load. 

I had discovered in my schoolwork 
some facility in sketching, and I delighted 
to loaf about the tombstone shop watch- 
ing the Loughreys chisel lambs and 
crosses, names and compliments, upon the 
polished marble. They used to let mo 
practice making letters, lambs and 
crosses on paper, flattering my vanity by 
the promise of an apprenticeship once I 
was old enough. I know now that they 
Avere but having sport with me, but I must 
thank them still for the dreams that T 
should be some day a first-class tomb- 
stone-cutter, and, more than that, perhaps 
a great sculptor. 

135 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Jim Loughrey had a favorite story of 
the farmer, in deep mourning, who pur- 
chased a headstone which bore the legend, 
''The Light of My Life Has Gone Out," 
and who promptly married again. 

Jim said — and in those days I believed 
him — that the farmer wanted the inscrip- 
tion changed lest it hurt the bride's feel- 
ings, and that he added to the epitaph 
the words: ''But I Have Another Match." 
Below us passed a quintette of pretty 
girls of our own age, and we tossed down 
buckeyes, which one 
(Becky) caught as 
handily as any boy. She 
flung us, in return, a 
bright red dahlia, and 
this I treasured all the 
day. 

Behind them came 
other girls, older, and 
one of them (Kate Ulman) was the "lalla- 
paloosa" of the time. I do not think I 
ever saw a prettier girl or one more 
charming in manner or disposition, a 
regular red-apple kind of girl, good to 
look at, and as wholesome as a girl might 

136 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

be. I sometimes think that that kind 
grows no longer. 

But even as she smiled up at us our 
attention was diverted from beauty to the 
beast. A horse and buggy passed at 
furious speed, and in the rig 
sat a big man muffled from 
head to foot in an enormous 
fur overcoat. We knew what 
that meant. 

It meant that the wearer 
of the coat was very drunk 
indeed, but no one in that 
town could ever understand 
why fire-water within meant 
fur without in summer-time. 
We simply checked it off as 
another of the community's eccentricities. 

Across the street the noonday crowd 
lined the curb from Dillon's grocery to 
the drugstore, and even the bookstore 
around the corner. It was made up of 
young attorneys, doctors and a few citi- 
zens in ordinary, some just returned 
from the boarding-house. 

Wils Rightmire, the hatter, and the 
most inquisitive man in town, had joined 

137 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 



the throng, and noticed that Lawyer 
Broucher wore a new hat. Wils lifted 
it from the lawyer's head, looked it over 
inside and out, and inquired abruptly: 

^' Where did you buy that hat? It's 
not good quality. I could have sold you 
a better for less." 

We didn't hear Broucher 's retort, but 
it must have been a comprehensive one, 
for everybody laughed as the hatter beat 
his retreat. 

From farther along the curb came a 
roar of distinctive 
laughter, and we 
looked up again to 
see a big, burlj' fel- 
low, roughly dressed, 
who carried a stout 
hickory cudgel. He 
towered head and 
shoulders above the 
crowd, and his great mouth opened as he 
laughed in a way that simulated the bray 
of Wentling's burro. Then we knew that 
the woodsman, Joe McClain, was in from 
Dry Ridge, on one of his semi-annual 
visits to town. 

138 




Laughing Joe McClain 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Just then we had to make way for the 
town engineer, who emerged from a hall- 
way, followed by his rodman and chain- 
men, carrying a transit, flags and chain. 



139 



CHAPTER XV. 

Seat of the Political Spellbinders, 
"Stuttering Joe," the Town Edi- 
tors AND Jewish Clothier. 

ONE hundred feet south, at the high- 
est point of the wall, among the 
pine-trees, was the rostrum from which 
the political spellbinders of the day held 
forth. There it was that I first heard 
James Gr. Blaine address a crowd which 
packed the square. There, too, the travel- 
ing fakirs and medicine men held forth 
whenever they visited the old town. 

*' Stuttering Joe" was coming down 
our side of the street with a playmate. 
Joe could whistle with any bird and swear 
with never the skipping of a syllable, but 
when he tried to articulate in ordinary 
speech, he missed fire like a balky motor- 
car. 

Once, in school, the teacher sent him 
to the blackboard to parse a sentence be- 

141 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

fore the grammar class, and he got 
nowhere. Professor Henrie, best of our 
instructors, called him sharply to ac- 
count. 

*' Joseph," he said, ^'I want you to get 
busy and parse that sentence. You stand 
there like a bump on a log. Get busy. I 
know you can do it if you put your mind 
to it." 

Joe tried to speak, and could not. 
Then, suddenly, in a voice as clear as a 
bell, he broke out with: 

*'I know well I can't." 

Professor Henrie was astonished, but 
his astonishment did not lessen the speed 
with which he strode to one of the win- 
dow shutters and drew from behind it a 
couple of long, villainous-looking rods. 
He grabbed Joe by the collar, jerked him 
around, and proceeded to give him a two- 
handed whipping that was a dandy. He 
wielded a rod with either hand, and after 
that whipping Joe never used another 
oath in the schoolroom. 

Behind Joe the darkest-skinned white 
man I had ever seen was trundling a 
wheelbarrow up the highway. It was 

142 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




'^Old Black Baltimore Twist" 

Maynes, as we called him, for 

his underpinning resembled a 

plug of tobacco then much in 

favor. 

The editors of the old 

town's rival papers passed, 

and, of course, they did not 

speak. Rival editors in towns 

that size seldom did in those 

days. 

The editor of the '^ Tribune 

and Herald," high silk hat tilted back, 

the tails of his long, black coat flapping, 

hurried past to avoid the necessity of 
addressing the editor of 
the ''Argus," a stately, 
dignified old gentleman, 
wearing a cape and carry- 
ing a cane. No such re- 
traint marked their edi- 
torial exchanges. 

The elder editor, owner 
of the Democratic journal, 
had a playful habit of 
reaching out with his cane 
and either hooking or tap- 




I' — ^ 



Editor of Tribune 

10 



143 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



,&^) 



ping every boy he chanced to meet, always 
releasing him with a kindly remark and a 
friendly smile. Once, I remember, his 
words to a playmate of mine 
made a lasting impression 
upon me. 

He stopped us on the 
street to ask some question, 
and my companion was 
abashed by his attention. His 
drooping head revealed his 
confusion, and he could not 
answer readily. The editor 
lifted the boy's chin with his 
cane. 

"Young man," he said, '^it never pays 
to hang your head when you are spoken 
to. Stand up like a man and look your 
questioner in the eye." 

He passed on, and my friend, although 
humiliated, thanks him to this day. 

We climbed the fence, and hurried on, 
first to the town's undertaking shop. Be- 
fore it, seated in the sunlight, were two 
old soldiers. One pointed up the street, 
and, as I turned, spat a mouthful of 
tobacco juice on my bare feet. 

144 




Editor of Argus 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

That hurt my boyish self-respect. I 
was at the point of tears, when the offender 
offered plausible apology. 

''Now, Cap," he said gently enough, 
''don't mind that. It was all a ixiistake. 
I mistook your foot for a brick. I won't 
do it again. I want to talk to you about 
the baseball suit we're going to get you," 
and he rattled on of cap and shirt, pants, 
stockings and shoes, along with ball and 
bat. 

And I believed him. All that fall those 
two old sinners kept me in blissful expec- 
tation of the gift, and week after week I 
visited them on Saturday, to be met with 
more excuses. It was, indeed, years be- 
fore I realized how thoughtlessly they had 
played on my credulity. 

They never knew the risk they ran of 
destroying my faith in a promise. 

Sam Fell, a little Jewish clothier, 
greeted us as we passed his store at the 
end of the square. I never saw him with- 
out a smile, or when he was not ready for 
a sale. Nor shall I forget the morgue-like 
odor of the stack of corduroy clothing in 
his store. 

145 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Almost every one Avore corduroy in 
those days, and the skill of modern manu- 
facturers had not yet eliminated the ' ^ wet- 
dog smell." The story ran, indeed, that 
Sam Fell once carried a sale to consum- 
mation by persuading a prospective pur- 
chaser by protesting that the odor of the 
store came from his feet, not from dead 
rats under the floor or from the corduroys. 

Sam once closed another sale by cor- 
responding quickness of thought. Those 
were the days when spring-bottom trou- 
sers were just going out of fashion, and a 
hard-looking stranger from Grape ville was 
looking for a pair. Sam showed his whole 
stock, but in vain. 

^^ Vat's d' matter mit dese bants'?" 
asked Sam, bluntly. 

*'Thar ain't no style to 'em; they 
hain't got spring enough to 'em." 

Sam stared mildly over the rims of his 
glasses. 

'^Chiminy krouts, man," he said, ''you 
look tough enough mitout spring in your 
bants. Vy don't you haf Bennet Rask 
tailor you a pair to order mit spring 
enough to suit?" 

146 



CHAPTER XVI. 



Black's Hotel — Jim Green, Hotel Por- 
ter — The Gamblers — Minstrel Band 
— The Absent-minded Minister — 
Deafy Mills and the Scotch Peddler. 

TT7E came, then, to Black's Hotel. On 
* ^ the comer most convenient to the 
bar the usual crowd was loafing 
— teamsters, wagon-makers, 
peddlers, lawyers, carriage 
painters, and, of course, the 
town gamblers. 

Two inmates of the county 
home were displaying the results 
of a postgraduate course in the 
indulgence which had brought 
about their distresses. Around 
the corner slouched Jim Grreen, 
the hotel porter, sloven in dress 
and manner, altogether indiffer- 
ent to the imputation of *' drunken nig 
ger" which was so generally applied. 

147 




Inmate of 
County Home 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Jim, indeed, rather enjoyed the noto- 
riety which his habits brought him. 

Once, indeed, when Ed Keenan had 
hailed him with a cheerful "Mornin' " 
and ''How are you, Jim"?" the porter had 
dropped into his own doggerel to respond: 

" I 'se kickin ', but not high ; 
Floppin', but can't fly; 
I's had two drinks dis mawnin', 
An' still I'm dry." 

The old town appreciated that verse. 
With all his intemperance, Jim was an 
ardent defendant of his race. The highest 
compliment he was ever known to give a 
friend, indeed, was to tell him that, ''al- 
though he had a white skin, he had a 
black heart." 

"Flash" Hurd, one of the card-players 
in the hotel group, was a fine-looking, 
well-dressed man of the most polished 
manners. He lived always at the best 
hotel in town, and he was accustomed to 
spend his afternoons in front of it, enter- 
taining, with exhaustless store of wit and 
anecdote, a few of his confreres. 

The old town was always a good town 
for the gamblers. There were, in fact, 

148 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

half a dozen families in which the gaming 
instinct had been transmitted from father 
to son for generations. There were not a 
few cases in which grandfather, father 
and son sat in the same game, and en- 
joyed it. 

This sporting element was always gen- 
erous in its support of the baseball club, 
and did much for football, then in its 
infancy. The old town always had good 
teams in both fields. Those who played 
well were held to be deserving of their 
reward. Indeed, I still treasure a beauti- 
ful ash bat with an invisible lead slug in 
its hollow center. It was useless as a bat, 
of course, but the things one wins as a 
boy are always precious. 

Across the way, at the foot of the steps 
which led to Courthouse Square, a group 
of young men watched a picturesque 
figure in make-up like that of a Revolu- 
tionary soldier. It was poor, simple- 
minded Colonel Rodgers from George 
Station, and he was going through a drill 
for them. 

Erect and distinguished in bearing, 
wearing a long, braided military coat, re- 

149 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



splendent epaulets and an impressive 
'' two-way" high hat, gilded and be- 
feathered, he swung a saber as he snapped 
out rasping orders to imaginary soldiers 
in imagined maneuvers on a 
make-believe battlefield. He 
did no harm, and every boy 
liked to watch him. 

A tall, slender man, ele- 
gantly attired in black, who 
wore a queer, flat-topped, 
broad-brimmed hat, passed by, 
and the Colonel halted. 

He faced the loafing groujj 
and ejaculatel suddenly: 

"Comrades, where did he 
get that hatf 
The loafers made no reply, for the man 
in question was the son of an honorable 
of the old towm, and an author of 
promise, whose first book had just at- 
tracted much attention. But the Colonel's 
question lives. 

To-day the people of that community 
continue to tell of the cracked old 
Colonel's query, and affirm with confidence 
that it supplied the inspiration for that 

150 




Son of an Hon 
oraWe 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



ballad, popular a generation since, which 
ran, ''Where Did You Get That Hatf 

But a newcomer saved us all embar- 
rassment. A big, round fellow came wad- 
dling up the walk ''Billy Bounce" fashion, 
and hailed the spectators cheerily, then 
addressed himself to the Colonel. 

"Sir," said he, "if you will march your 
heroic soldiers down to my hotel, I will 
give them all a drink. ^, 

The Colonel made the "^i 
right-about, saluted mag- /^^-x^^nX 
nificently, clicked his heels | j \ \.\ 
together, and bellowed: V--o,/^l~^- , 

"I thank you. Colonel 
Hixon. I shall march my 
forces right down. You 
honor my troops, and we are 
very grateful to you, sir. 

"Company, attention! 
Forward! March!" ^"' '''"°" 

We watched them march down toward 
the bar, for Landlord Hixon was as good 
as his invitation. 

From the little square before Black's 
Hotel came the blare of horns, and we ran 
to catch up with the procession. Duprez 

151 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

and Benedict's Minstrels were in town, 
and we had forgotten it. In forty seconds 
^'Skinny" and I, too, were in line. 

The minstrel band was gloriously uni- 
formed. Its brass and silver horns shone 
in the autumn sun and its gaily orna- 
mented drums were a delight. We singled 
out Duprez, of course — the music-master 
of his generation, whose cornet solos 
seemed incomparable. And, as we watched 
him in admiration, we saw our OAvn 
''Chalk" Kibble, chief cornetist in our 
home-town band, in the forefront of the 
spectators, paying mute, but unconcealed, 
tribute to the technique of the minstrel 
man. 

But above the blare of the music rose 
a shout of ''Look out there! Gret back! 
Get back!" and the crowd swung to the 
curb as a careless rider went through at 
the gallop. He looked neither to right 
nor left, oblivious to the indignation he 
aroused and to the risk he ran. 

Tom Washabaugh, constable extraor- 
dinary and guardian of the old town's 
peace, pushed his way into the middle of 
the street and hailed the horseman in sten- 

152 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




ConstaWe 



torian tones, but he clattered on up Acad- 
emy Hill, frightening people and horses 
and rousing every dog in 
town. 

Constable Washabaugh 
addressed the town. 

''Dang that preacher," he 
proclaimed. ''I've told him 
for the last time he must quit 
going through town at that 
pace. I'm going to arrest 
him now." 

Of course that roused 
sympathy for the horseman; 
protests against the officer's program 
came fast. The horseman was the godly 
pastor of our church. 

The press of pastoral duties made him 
always in haste when he ventured abroad 
on horseback, and he combined the love 
of fast horses with his affection for his 
flock. Moreover, he was absent-minded. 
He has long since gone to his reward, but 
his influence must live in his church and 
his community. 

Among the most interested of the lis- 
teners in the first row along the gutter 

153 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 






was ''Deafy" Mills, veteran of the war 
between the States, who never appeared 
without his uniform. 

*'Deafy" was deaf as the proverbial 
adder, a circumstance which affirmed his 
patriotic spirit, for even the United States 
Pension Department admitted that his 
ear-drums had been broken by the roar 
of artillery. His sense of sight seemed 
the more acute, and his mastery of the 

art of lip-reading was 
the wonder of the 
town. 

His accepted name 
was '^ Cheese-cutter," 
and every boy knew 
him by that title, 
though he dared not 
use it to his face. 

''Deafy" wan- 
dered into Amos 
Kiehl's grocery one day to find on display 
an old-fashioned rat-trap, made by fasten- 
ing a powerful spring to a V-shaped board 
in such a manner that it would descend 
with crushing force upon the rat which 
nibbled the bait beneath. The trap was 

154 




Cheese-cutter Mills 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

set that day, and ''Deafy" stuck in his 
hand. 

The spring sang as the board came 
down, breaking four of ''Deafy's" fingers. 
The old soldier yelled, and the grocer ran 
out to release the spring. 

''What is that dinged thing, Amos^" 
shouted ''Deafy." 

The grocer explained. 

*'Ge-e-e-e-s-s-s Cripes," rejoined the 
veteran. ''I thought it was a patent 
cheese-cutter." 



155 



HE FOUND IT. 

A well-known Indiana man, 

One dark night last week, 
"Went to the cellar with a match 

In search of a gas leak. 
(He found it.) 

John Welch by curiosity 

(Dispatches state) was goaded; 

He squinted in his old shotgun 
To see if it was loaded. 

(It was.) 

A man in Macon stopped to watch. 

A patent cigar-clipper; 
He wondered if his finger was 

Not quicker than the nipper. 

(It wasn't.) 

A Maine man read that human eyes 

Of hypnotism were full ; 
He went to see if it would work 
Upon a hungry bull. 
(It wouldn't.) 

— San Francisco Bulletin. 



156 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Beside ''Deafy" Mills was old Jamie 
McKnight, a Scotchman, who had come to 
the commmiity two generations earlier, 
and who picked up a precarious living by 
the sale of needles, pins, corn and bunion 
eradicators, shoestrings and liniment. He 
carried his wares in a little home-made 
chest, covered with black oilcloth, with a 
tray above in which samples were dis- 
played for inspection. A belt from the 
chest ran round his waist and straps about 
his neck, so that both hands were free. 

Jamie was a little man, and he looked 
much younger than his years. He boasted 
always his exemplary life, but he had still 
another explanation for his fine physical 
condition. 

Jamie was accustomed to take raw 
wheat, run it through a coffee-grinder 
until it reached the consistency of old- 
fashioned oatmeal, and eat each morning 
a tablespoonful, seasoned with a little salt 
and covered, perhaps, with milk — not 
cream — or with diced apples, prunes, 
dates or figs. He would explain, none too 
elegantly, the necessity for the most com- 
plete mastication and the advantages of 

157 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

the food as a laxative. None who ever 
tried his remedy questioned its worth. 

Who knows but, if old Jamie 
McKnight's raw wheat had been adver- 
tised after the modern method, his name 
might not have been posted far and near 
and his life ended in luxury*? 



158 



CHAPTER XYII. 

"Honey Fly" Haynes. 

ACROSS the square, upon the hillside 
overlooking the valley of Jack's Run 
and the railroad, one might see the home 
of ''Honey Fly" Haynes under the trees, 




11 



Honey Fly 
159 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

a little place which looked to eastward, as 
it seemed he always did. 

He was a Civil War veteran, and a 
bachelor because of it — this man whom 
children called ''Honey Fly" in love, and 
men like him have always been too rare. 

He had been wounded desperately in 
some forgotten skirmish, and his spine 
was pitifully twisted. When he walked, 
his breast protruded like a pouter pigeon's. 
He had an enormous Adam's apple, and 
when he spoke a painful "Ah," a labori- 
ous swallow, and another "Ah" broke 
into every sentence. The first impression 
could not but be repellent, yet no child 
could look twice into his kind face, framed 
in long, gray hair and shaded by a broad- 
brimmed Quaker hat, without instinctive 
trust, which grew to admiration. 

He was the only honey-bee man in that 
old town, and he must have drawn sweet- 
ness of his spirit from his bees. I never 
knew a sunnier soul. 

"Honey Fly" claimed to know, not 
only the methods, but the political rela- 
tions, of his bees, and he could tell about 
them. In his own halting, yet sure, way 

160 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

lie told the children — for the children 
would always listen — of how the hives 
awake in spring, of the formation and de- 
parture of the swarms, the foundation of 
the new city, the birth, combat and nup- 
tial flight of the young queens, the mas- 
sacre of the males, and, at the last, of the 
return of winter. 

He had never heard of Maeterlinck, yet 
his sympathy must have been as true, his 
insight as genuine and his knowledge 
every whit as comprehensive. He so loved 
his bees and their product that only ad- 
versity compelled the sale of honey. He 
spoke of the quality of his commodity, of 
the perfection of the comb and the bou- 
quet of the honey as though he felt a per- 
sonal and parental relationship to every 
bee. He took his money as though accept- 
ing it for the sale of some handiwork of 
an only child. He smelled even of the 
bee and its honey. 

His garden was a delight, as men's 
gardens always are. The flowers were 
old-fashioned, even for forty years ago, 
and they grew under and above the great 
grape-arbors. The clusters which they 

161 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

bore, I'll warrant, still seem to the boys 
of that old town like those which the chil- 
dren of Israel bore back from Canaan. 
They always call to mind that picture, in 
the book of Bible stories, of the men who 
carried back their proof of the fruitful- 
ness of the land upon a pole across two 
men's shoulders. 

He had a fig-tree, too, of which a rare 
story ran. 

"Honey Fly" loved that fig-tree, and 
cared for it as for a child. An inquisitive 
young matron of the neighborhood, run- 
ning in one day to borrow flowers, paused 
before it, and, turning naively to the 
owner, expressed surprise at the small- 
ness of the leaves. "Honey Fly" told the 
story gently, but he never told her name. 
He was that kind of a man. 

"Honey Fly" was a man of splendid 
courage. He knew life, and, despite the 
handicap which his heroism had laid upon 
him, he faced it unafraid. We boys would 
sit at his feet for hours to hear him tell 
of war as he had seen it. 

Always he glorified his comrades' 
courage, emphasized the suffering and 

162 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

hardship, the grief and pain, which they 
had endured. In those days I never 
thought of the price which he had paid, 
and his parents with him. 

These four years past I have grown 
wiser. My two boys answered the call to 
arms in the spring of 1917, and, though 
their mother and I sent them out proudly, 
we found little pleasure in the sending. 
No doubt ''Honey Fly's" father and 
mother felt even as we did, and knew un- 
utterable woe when their boy came back 
maimed and suffering with horrible nerv- 
ousness. How many fathers and mothers, 
1 wonder, and how many stalwart young 
men, have considered the sacrifices of 
their elders in a new light within these 
last years ? I am not likely to forget with 
what pride my wife and I first read this 
bit of verse, thrust into my hand by my 
aviator son when I bade him good-by at 
his Texas training-camp just before he 
left for overseas: 



163 



WE WHO STAY AT HOME.* 
Edgar A. Guest. 

When you were just our little boy, on many a night 

we crept 
Unto your cot and watched o'er you and all the 

time you slept. 
We tucked the covers round your form and 

smoothed your pillow, too. 
And sometimes stooped and kissed your cheeks, but 

that you never knew. 
Just as we came to you back then through many a 

night and day, 
Our spirits now shall come to you — to kiss and 

watch and pray. 

Whenever you shall look away into God's patch of 

sky, 
To think about the folks at home, we shall be 

standing by. 
And as we prayed and watched o'er you when you 

were wrapped in sleep. 
So through your soldier danger now the old-time 

watch we'll keep. 
You will not know that we are there, you will not 

- see or hear. 
But all the time, in prayer and thought, we shall 

be very near. 



*From "Over Here." Copyright, 1918, by The Reilly & Lee Co., 
Mr. Guest's publishers, and reprinted by their permission. 

164 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The world has made of you a man ; the work of 

man yon do; 
But unto us you still remain the baby that we 

knew; 
And we shall come, as once we did, on wondrous 

wings of prayer. 
And you will never know how oft in spirit we are 

there. 
We'll stand beside your bed at night, in silence 

bending low. 
And all the love we gave you then shall follow 

where you go. 

Oh, we were proud of you back then, but we are 

prouder now ; 
We see the stamp of splendor God has placed upon 

your brow. 
And we, who are the folks at home, shall pray the 

old-time prayer. 
And ask the God of mercy to protect you with His 

care. 
And as we came to you of old, although you never 

knew. 
The hearts of us, each day and night, shall come 

with love to you. 



165 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

The Organ-grinder, the Fantastic 

Parades, the Street Fakirs, 

AND "Strap Oil." 

WE could not have asked a better day 
to tour Main Street. The sunshine 
and the minstrel band had brought every- 
body out, and there was sport a-plenty 
for all. 

Just below the hotel a crowd of young- 
sters had gathered about an Italian organ- 
grinder, whose peg-legged instrument sup- 
plied popular airs, while his diminutive 
monkey, red-capped and coated, danced. 
The monkey bowed politely in response to 
applause when the reel was finished, and 
then passed the hat, bowing again when- 
ever a child dropped a coin. 

But he was cautious, for, when the 
round of the circle was done, he tested 
the coins with his teeth, one by one, before 
he transferred them to his coat pocket. 

167 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



The visits of organ-grinders, however, 
were not to be compared to those of the 
foreigners who once came through with 
a great trained bear. They stopped at a 

convenient corner, 
and, while one re- 
cited a weird in- 
cantation, the bear 
handled adeptly a 
long pole. Then, 
when the incanta- 
tion gave way to a 
sort of ^'hootchy- 
kootchy" rhythm, 
the bear began the 
very oddest of gyrations. 

Our elders Avere not responsive to this 
tj^pe of entertainment, but the children 
followed in admiring droves from corner 
to corner. 

That square, by the way, reminds me 
of the fantastic parades the boys of the 
old town were accustomed to hold every 
New Year's Day, and how, on that cele- 
brated spot, Capt. Lubbie McClellan con- 
ducted his great artillery parade and 
cannon-firing demonstration. 

168 




Trained Bear 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

He decorated a big wagon with the 
national colors of half a dozen lands, and 
mounted upon it an enormous wooden 
pump, painted in excellent imitation of a 
bronze cannon. Four horses, adorned 
with flags and bunting, hauled it all over 
town in wake of the parade, and finally 
halted in the square, because the biggest 
crowd was there. 

At the command of the captain, boys 
unhitched the team and led it up a side 
street, then waved back the throng. 

Meanwhile others were unlimbering 
the pretended gun and spiking, the buffer 
to the ground as a preliminary to the 
salute. Captain McClellan advanced to 
the breech to light the charge. 

This was too much for the innocent 
bystanders, who had watched before with 
amused interest. A man made his way 
through the crowed and hurried toward the 
captain, shouting: 

''Don't you dare shoot that there can- 
non off here. You'll break all our win- 
dows. ' ' 

Still protesting, he was pushed back 
into the crowd, which gave way on all 

169 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

sides. The captain struck another match; 
there was a sputtering in the breech, a 
puff of blue smoke, and the deafening 
report of a giant fire-cracker within. 

The boys had limbered up their piece, 
hitched up the horses and were off before 
half the crowd knew how they had been 
''sold." 

In that square, too, the street fakirs 
always staged their performances, and the 
tight-rope walkers made their way above 
the heads of the spectators, balance-pole 
in hand. The rope was always stretched 
from Black's Hotel to Wiltshire's three- 
story brick block across the way. These 
were the tallest buildings in town. 

We never passed the jail without 
entering and slipping back through the 
hall to the prison door. There were hard- 
looking individuals loafing within, and the 
dungeon odor — stale tobacco smoke, damp 
exhalations, chloride of lime and human 
perspiration — was altogether depressing 
to the curious visitor. 

From somewhere in the shadows a slim 
figure started up, and a bullet-headed 
youth, close-cropped, with shifty, beady 

170 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

eyes, came forward to the big, barred gate, 
smiling ingratiatingly at us. 

We shrank back as he thrust his 
scrawny arms through the grating and 
asked for something to eat. We gave him 
our last apple, fearfully, and fled. He was 
a degenerate, awaiting trial for the mur- 
der of a little child. 

Outside of the door Sheriff Kilgore 
hailed us, laid his hand upon my shoulder, 
and asked of our families. As we turned 
to go, he handed me a dime, and was gone 
within before I could thank him. That 
man knew a boy's heart. How often have 
1 compared him with those brothers who 
promised me the baseball suit! 



171 



IN A FRIENDLY SORT 0' WAY. 

When a man ain't got a cent, and he's feeling 

kind o' blue, 
An' the clouds hang dark an' heavy, an' won't let 

the sunshine through, 
It's a great thing, oh, my brethren, for a feller 

just to lay 
His hand upon your shoulder in a friendly sort 

' M^ay ! 

It makes a man feel curious, it makes the teardrops 

start, 
An' you sort o' feel a flutter in the region of the 

heart ; 
You can look up and meet his eyes; you don't 

know what to say 
When his hand is on your shoulder in a friendly 

sort ' way ! 

Oh, the world's a curious compound, with its honey 

and its gall, 
With its cares and bitter crosses, but a good world, 

after all. 
And a good God must have made it — leastways, 

that is what I say. 
When a hand is on my shoulder in a friendly sort 

o' way. 



172 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The dime went for gingersnaps and 
raisins, and we sat down on dry-goods 
boxes to eat. John Reed and ''Ez" Gross 
spied us, and we saw them whispering. 
Presently ^'Ez" hailed us. 

''Boys, do you want to earn a nickel? 
Skip down to 'Hen' Breitagam, in the 
shoeshop, and get a nickel's worth of 
strap oil." 

He handed me a paper-wrapped parcel, 
cautioning against breaking it, and we 
took turns carrying it gingerly for four 
blocks. 

Uncle Henry was at his cobbler's 
bench, and he looked over his glasses quiz- 
zically. Then he rose wearily, went into 
the cubby-hole back of his workshop, and 
presently returned the package to us. 

"You keep the nickel," he said, "and 
tell 'Ez' this is all I've got, and not to 
send for any more." 

We hoped, then, for five cents for the 
trip and five more when we had climbed 
the hill again, but we had no such luck. 
"Ez" roared when he received the cob- 
bler's message, and opened the package 
to display a broken lamp-chimney. But 

17o 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

he did give us a handful of kisses, paper- 
wrapped, with love jingles on the wrap- 
pers. 

Sending youngsters for ''strap oil" 
was a favored joke in those days, for strap 
oil meant merely the liberal application 
of a strap. 

It took many pairs of shoes for our big 
family, and father sent us always to Uncle 
Henry's to have them made to measure. 
He used good materials, and his workman- 
ship was always excellent, but the shoes 
always seemed too large, and they had 
the knack of turning up at the toes. 

Years afterward my elder brother and 
I met old Henry in the street at Altoona, 
and hailed him. He remembered us, and 
presently said, in reminiscence: 

''You boys had a good father, a good 
father. But you always complained your 
boots and shoes were too big. I can tell 
you why: He always came in the day after 
you ordered a pair and told me to make 
them two sizes big. 'The boys are grow- 
ing,' he said. 'The boys are growing.' " 

At last we understood. Hear, thought- 
ful dad. 

174 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Ashes on the Slide — Pike Pole — Amos 
Kelly, and Nathaniel Dickenhooper. 

RESENTFUL despite the candy, we 
left Reed & Gross' store and came 
again to the Pittsburgh Street down 
which they had sent us on our silly errand. 

Pittsburgh Street was the old town's 
section of the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia 
Pike, the first improved highway between 
East and West, and the route traversed 
by the first settlers of the Northwest Ter- 
ritory. For many years it was a toll road, 
the nearest toll-gates being located respec- 
tively a mile east and west of town. 

Ezra Meeker, a pioneer who jour- 
neyed West in the fifties by ox-cart, took 
this road, and he returned in 1910, adver- 
tising the Oregon trail, on his way to 
Washington. Our chief interest in the 
road, however, arose from the fact that 
West Pittsburgh Street, from Main Street 

12 175 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

to the bottom of Bunker Hill, afforded 
the best coasting in town. 

We always abhorred Lawyer ''Andy" 
Fulton, who lived on the slope, and who 
seemed to delight in sprinkling ashes on 
the slide. 

''Andy" spoke with a broad burr, and 
we boys were accustomed, as we flashed 
past, to hail him with "Wha' Hoo, Andy." 

He did not like that, and one night, 
when we were noisier than usual, he ap- 
peared at his front door. Shaking his 
fist into the night, as he was accustomed 
to shake it at an adversary in the law, he 
shouted: 

"You young hounds will wake up in 
a blamed sight hotter place than this some 
fine morning baying your everlasting 
'Wha' Hoo.' " 

He slammed the door, and we all felt 
better. 



176 



ASHES ON THE SLIDE.* 
Eugene Field. 

"When Jim and Bill and I were boys many years 

ago, 
How gaily did we use to hail the coming of the 

snow ! 
Our sleds, fresh painted red and with their runners 

round and bright, 
Seemed to respond right briskly to our clamor of 

delight, 
As we dragged them up the slippery road that 

climbed the rugged hill 
Where perched the old frame meetin '-house, so 

solemn like and still. 

Ah, coasting in those days — those good old days — 

was fun indeed ! 
Sleds at that time I 'd have you know were paragons 

of speed ! 
And if the hill got bare in spots, as hills will do, 

why, then, 
We'd haul on ice and snow to patch those bad 

spots up again; 
But, oh ! with what sad certainty our spirits would 

subside 
When Deacon Frisbee sprinkled ashes where we 

used to slide! 

*Copyriglit and used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons 
Company, New York. 

177 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The deacon he would roll his eyes and gnash his 
toothless gums, ' 

And clear his skinny throat, and twirl his saintly, 
bony thumbs. 

And tell you : ' ' When I wuz a boy, they taught me 
to eschew 

The godless, ribald vanities which modern youth 
pursue ! 

The pathway that leads down, down to hell is slip- 
pery, straight and wide ; 

And Satan lurks for prey where little boys are 
wont to slide ! ' ' 

Now, he who ever in his life has been a little boy 
Will not reprove me when he hears the language 

I employ 
To stigmatize as wickedness the deacon's zealous 

spite 
In interfering with the play wherein we found 

delight ; 
And so I say, with confidence, not unalloyed of 

pride : 
"Gol durn the man who sprinkles ashes where the 

youngsters slide ! ' ' 

Deacon Frisbee long ago went to his lasting rest. 
His money well invested in farm mortgages out 

West; 
Bill, Jim and I, no longer boys, have learned 

through years of strife 
That the troubles of the little boy pursue the man 

through life; 

178 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

That here and there along the course wherein we 

hoped to glide 
Some envious hand has sprinkled ashes just to 

spoil our slide ! 

And that malicious, envious hand is not the dea- 
con's now. 

Grim, ruthless Fate, the evil sprite none other is 
than thou ! 

Riches and honors, peace and care, come as they 
beck and go; 

The soul, elate with joy to-day, to-morrow writhes 
in woe ; 

And till a man has turned his face unto the wall 
and died. 

He must expect to get his share of ashes on his 
slide ! 



179 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

''Pike Pole" Meller, a driver still more 
reckless than our preacher, almost ran 
over us as he dashed by, headed for 
Black's Hotel. 

"Pike Pole" got his name by bringing 
a load of pike poles into town once on a 
Sunday, having got mixed up in the days 
of the week. As he drove up Main Street, 
he heard the church bells ringing, and 
noticed that the stores were closed. Peo- 
ple in their Sunday best looked at him 
curiously and wdth reproach. 

Puzzled, he drew up before Henry 
Welty's store, and made inquiry of Squire 
Roarer. 

"What in tarnation is the matter here 
to-day'?" he asked. "Why do they ring 
the bells, and why ain't this store openT' 

The squire could be heard across the 
street. 

"You danged fool," said he, "don't 
you know this is Sunday*?" 

And the name "Pike Pole" stuck. 

The music of the minstrel band had 
died away, and the crowd had disap- 
peared. The street was quiet again, save 
where the three colored barbers, Luncie 

180 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



brothers and Frank Lupton, porter at the 
Zimmerman House, were whistling mer- 
rily in anticipation of the evening's delight. 

Frank Lupton never missed a minstrel 
show in the old town, and he always sat 
in the front row in the gallery, and 
laughed louder than any other three men 
in the house. The players soon knew him, 
and, by pointed jests and winks and seem- 
ingly casual references, would stir him to 
greater outbursts. His 
laughter, we all felt, was 
worth the price of the 
show. 

Just then a customer 
stepped into the shop, 
and the three barbers 
hurried in, waiting only 
to pick up poor old 
^'Bawley" Himmel, who 
had taken too much of 
*' Vinegar Bitters." 

A cigar-store clerk was teasing Amos 
Kelly, driver of ''Blind Dan" Taylor's 
dray, just to hear him swear. Amos was 
the profanest man in town, given to most 
violent vileness and most sinful oaths. 

181 




Amos Kelly 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Amos was the inspiration for a collo- 
quialism much used by the citizens, and 
when one wished to emphasize an asser- 
tion, he was accustomed to say: ''You bet 
your Amos Kelly." 

With all his profanity, Amos had a 
fondness for Sunday school, and just be- 
fore Christmas he always became a reg- 
ular attendant. It was at the Lutheran 
Sunday school that he made history. 

As the scholars passed out. Superin- 
tendent Trauger stood at the door with 
the glad handshake and a pleasant word 
for all. As Amos hobbled past, he greeted 
him cordially. 

"Well, Amos, I am glad to see you 
here again," he said. "I hope you liked 
our Sunday school." 

Amos swallowed fast, his head poised 
like a robin which listens for an earth- 
worm. 

"You bet your blankety-blank-blank I 
did," he said. 

The expression lived. 

We were too busy, or too young, to 
note the little courting-bees already under 
way in every doorway, shaded porch or 

182 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

hammock. Every young man in the old 
town was out, making the most of his 
Saturday half -holiday, preparing for the 
Sabbath eve flirtation. It was always thus. 

Beyond the square we stopped, accord- 
ing to our custom, before the biggest gen- 
eral store of the town to ''skin the cat" 
on the hitching-rail along the curb. As 
we did so, a hustling young clerk came 
out of the store cellar with a jug of molas- 
ses in one hand and a big mackerel in the 
other. The proprietor was talking with a 
well-to-do coal operator, and the two were 
manifestly bored when a local millwright, 
who had rested too long at the nearest 
tavern, insisted on joining in the conver- 
sation. 

Years afterward I was one of the en- 
gineers selected for the survey of land 
optioned for purchase in the Crab Creek 
coal-field by that storekeeper, Mr. Dono- 
hue, and he sent us far back into the hills 
to the farm of Nathaniel Dickenhooper. 
He came along in his big spring-wagon. 

Half a mile from the farm we met old 
man Dickenhooper, and Mr. Donohue 
made much of him, saying finally: 

183 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

"Nathaniel, the boys will want dinner, 
and I suppose your good wife will get it 
for them. I know they'll get a good feed, 
for there isn't a better cook in the 
county. ' ' 

''Wall, I dunno," was the response. 
''She cooked a chicken for you yesterday, 
and you didn't come, an' ever since she's 
been as tarnation cranky as an ol' hen. 
That's why I'm so far from home. You 
go see for yourself. I'm dad-burned if I 
will." 

That rather disturbed us, for farm- 
houses were scarce on Crab Creek, but we 
picked out Jim Keenan, our best talker, 
to beard the lioness, and he soon returned 
with the best of news. Mr. Donohue then 
called old Dickenhooper aside, produced 
a legal paper of some sort, and asked me 
to hold the ink-bottle w^hile the old man 
signed his name. We had to use the fiat 
top of a fence rail for a writing-desk. 

The old man spoke disparagingly of 
his penmanship as he dipped pen in ink, 
and I soon knew why. His labored 
"Nathaniel" took up the whole of the first 
blank line across the sheet, and he shook 

184 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

his head regretfully, remarking: *' Guess 
1 didn't cal-clate 'xactly right, Mr. Dono- 
hue." 

Donohue urged him on, and a second 
laborious effort brought forth a wide- 
spread, sprawling '^Dicken," which took 
the whole of the second line. 

The '' Hooper" took the whole of the 
third dotted line, and every one was 
satisfied. 

Mr. Donohue left then, on some plaus- 
ible excuse, expressing regret that he 
could not enjoy Mrs. Dickenhooper's cook- 
ery with us. Two hours later we knew 
why. 

The flies ate more than we did, and 
there was nothing on the table that I 
could abide — meat, butter, vegetables. At 
either end was a big dish of elderberries, 
cooked on the stems, which were calcu- 
lated to spoil any appetite. Even the 
bread stuck in my teeth. 

Old man Dickenhooper was a solicitous 
host, however, much puzzled by the dainty 
appetites of ^'Yeou Taown Fellows," and 
forever urging us to "pitch in." At last 
he brought us a basket of very fair apples. 

185 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

We thought, then, that Mrs. Dicken- 
hooper's dinner had been affected by her 
temper, but Mr. Donohue told me later 
that they were ever thus. Old Nathaniel 
seemed to thrive upon such fare, none 
the less. 



186 



CHAPTER XX. 



The Landlord of the Kettering House, 
THE Snake-charmer, Aunt Lizzie 

KiNCAID AND THE HORSE DoCTOR. 

THE West Newton hack was just leav- 
ing the post-of&ce across from Dono- 
hue's store, and the postmaster stood just 
outside the doorway, in talk 
with the Kettering House 
landlord. The landlord, 
short and fat, was in full 
regalia of the military order 
of his lodge. 

Whenever he appeared 
thus it was indication that 
some member had died, and 
the hour of burial was at 
hand. 

If the funeral was to be 

late in the day, the landlord 

was accustomed to dress for it in the 

morning, and lose no opportunity of pa- 
is? 




tJ^gp- 



Kettering House 
Landlord 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



rading about the town in uniform. When 
thus arrayed, you could hear him coming 
half a block away, chains and trappings 
clinking, and sword scabbard clattering on 
the pavement. 

Jonathan Schneider, who had a local 

reputation as 
a snake- 
charmer, was 
entertaining a 
sidewalk 
group we 
would have 
joined, when 
a chunky, 
cross - eyed 
woman, trun- 
"^ciiLiz dling a two- 

wheeled cart 
loaded with fresh, ripe fruit and crisp 
vegetables, made all give way. It was 
''Dutch Liz," the first person in the old 
town to peddle such supplies from door 
to door. 

Lawyer Lane, bachelor of uncertain 
age, and sensitive as a girl about just that, 
came out of his office and headed for the 

188 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

courthouse, no doubt to some political con- 
ference. 

He was a capable counselor, a shrewd 
politician, but he bore the name of being 
^' near" in money matters. His friends, as 
well as his enemies, remembered the time 
he had entertained a Governor of the State 
at a banquet in the Laird House, to meet 
attorneys and prominent citizens of the 
town. The banquet consisted of a pale, 
watery oyster stew, with w^ater crackers 
on the side. 

^^Aunt" Lizzie Kincaid greeted us 
pleasantly. Quiet, kindly, unassuming, 
she loved the townspeople and the towns- 
people all loved her. She welcomed more 
new babies than any doctor, and old 
"Doc" Anawalt was wont to tell his pa- 
tients not to worry if they could not 
reach him in the hour of their need. 

''She'll care for you better than I 
could," he was accustomed to say, and 
he meant it. 

Sid Yail, who looked after the vats 
in the tannery, was a quaint and improvi- 
dent soul, with a rapidly increasing 
family. 

189 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



Once, when a visitor at his home ad- 
mired his youngest and inquired in re- 
gard to the doctor, Sid replied: 

''Doctor'? Huh, we don't need any 
doctor in this end of town. We get Aunt 
Lizzie." 

''She must make a lot of money," haz- 
arded the guest. 

"I guess she does," was Sid's ag- 
grieved reply. "She held me up for 
seventy-five cents for this 
last one." 

Bill Lowry, horseman, 
was leading a dejected-look- 
ing animal up the street, and 
he asked us to summon Doc- 
tor Moyer. Moyer was 
neither allopath nor homeo- 
path, but just plain horse. 

He stuck his hand in the 
animal's mouth, and ex- 
pressed the professional 
opinion that the beast was nine years old. 
"I know that," said Bill, "but I want 
to know what's wrong with him. He's 
sick." 

Doctor Moyer never cracked a smile. 

190 




Doctor Moyer 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

''I know he vas sick," he replied, ''und 
I don't feel veil mineself. I vas oudt all 
last night mit a cow." 

But he knew how to relieve the animal. 

At Shuster's grocery the South Side 
congress was in session. Its members 
were always there — on the steps or on 
boxes — and they never seemed to work. 
They all gave cheerful greeting to Joe 
Tipton, son-in-law to the town brewer, 
who passed them with a '^blue boy" — a 
gallon keg of amber cheer. 

Across the street Leopold Wengler, 
pioneer jeweler, complained of the dull- 
ness of trade. 

He had enjoyed a monopoly for many 
years, when the Fisher boys, who learned 
the trade under his direction, opened an 
opposition store. Bob Fisher hired me, 
then, as an all-round clerk, clock-cleaner 
and delivery boy. 

One of my regular jobs was to pick out 
one of the best clocks in the store each 
day and carry it past Wengler 's store, in 
order to convince him that his rival was 
making some good sales. I came back by 
alley-ways and side streets. 

^3 191 



CHAPTER XXI. 

"Blind Lew" Kendall, the Town Con- 
stable, THE Printing-office, the 
Town Artist and Jim Silvis, the 
Hack Driver. 

LITTLE Eddie Gray, leading '^ Blind 
Lew" Kendall, stopped us to ask if 
we were going to the minstrel show. 
''Blind Lew" was going to hear the music. 

He was the old town's best-known 
optimist, always ready with a cheerful 
smile and a kindly word for his acquaint- 
ances. Knowing them only by their voices, 
he seldom made a mistake in his saluta- 
tion. 

Ever a favorite with the young folk 
of the town, he attended every ball game, 
standing with his hands on some young- 
ster's shoulders, and rooting with the best 
as his friend called out the plays. 

Lew was hardly forty, but he seemed 
an old, old man. He had lost one eye at 

193 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Antietam, and had been invalided home. 
Years of suffering preceded the loss of 
the other, but this affliction never crushed 
his spirit. He had learned to make 
brooms, and no better broom than his 
was made. The housewives of the town 
always insisted upon his handiwork. 

I remember visiting his little home in 
the late summer, and going with him 
through his wonderful garden. He showed 
me beautiful flowers, big red tomatoes, 
sweet corn, squash, pumpkins, Lima beans 
and all other vegetables which grew uilder 
his constant care. 

He told me that his sense of touch in- 
formed him of the progress of his produce. 
He did all the work himself except the 
plowing, plotting his beds by measuring 
along the fence. His deft fingers, even, 
could distinguish weeds from vegetables, 
and never a weed showed in his little 
patch of ground. 

He was the wonder of the town, in this 
particular, and his life a very real inspi- 
ration to his neighbors. 

Lawrence Heimer, who was soon to 
become the town constable, nodded to us 

194 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

from the doorway of his little clothing- 
store in the shadow of the Masonic Tem- 
ple and the Underwood House. 

Lawrence was a good constable, but 
excitable, and his excitement often led to 
weird combinations of German and En- 
glish. 

Many a time he would arrest a man 
with the words: "I am your brisoner. 
You come along by me." Once, the story 
ran, he told a resisting offender who 
sought to cling to chair or table or door- 
frame: "You vill, vill you? Shust come 
oudtzide und put me oudt." 

I have always remembered the way in 
which he told me of his discovery of his 
son '^ Spider" in the act of chewing 
tobacco. 

"I shust go up de schdreet by, und 
turn de corner round, und dere I see my 
poy mit a big chaw-tobak right in hees 
moudt. ' ' 

"Spider" got his. 

Jerry Hammer, proud as any showman 
who ever drove a gilded circus chariot, 
passed us then with his four-horse team 
and a great load of coal. Jerry had a 

195 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

standing challenge to any teamster in the 
county to match him in a haulage con- 
test. He loved his horses, and he found 
no takers. 

"Lisp" Baynes and Eber Brown were 
standing in front of Hoffman's jewelry 
store, and, though they were our elders, 
we halted to speak to them. 

Eber was the town's one dwarf, hardly 
larger than Gen. Tom Thumb, and a 
friendly little chap. He was a master in 
outdoor sports, always taking part in 
baseball and top-spinning and hoop-roll- 
ing, and our best trick performer on the 
velocipede. Every boy in town envied 
him, for he had been offered a job in P. T. 
Barnum's side show. 

"Lisp" Baynes was big and fat and 
rosy-cheeked, with a receding chin and 
protruding upper teeth. He lisped amaz- 
ingly. 

He was inordinately vain; the best 
dresser among the older boys, but a jest 
among the maidens, for he was altogether 
bashful. He was fortunate, though, in the 
possession of a dappled pony and dog-cart, 
and the girls liked that. 

196 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

We came, now, to the home of the 
'^ Herald and Tribune." The '^ ghost had 
just walked," and the printers, pay in 
pocket, sat on the steps. They talked 
shop, as printers always do, and some one 
had just told a funny story for Journey- 
man Ed Price, who, always weakened 
when he laughed, was holding to the rai] 
of the steps to keep from falling. 

''Skinnj^" and I knew these printers, 
and in later years often went to the 
'' Herald" office on press-day to help with 
the old hand-press and to fold the "patent 
insides. ' ' 

One of the comedians in the group, 
little, old Alex Albertson, had already 
made several visits to the Kettering House 
bar. We knew that when we heard him 
say, as he always did when properly mel- 
lowed: ''Handsome is as handsome does 
— a few more days of grace." 

I have never figured out just what he 
meant by it. 

As we loitered at the curb, a newcomer 
joined the group — old ''Rusty" Leighton, 
a tramp printer, who had fought through 
the war, and had worked on almost every 

197 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

paper in the country — by his own account. 
He might well have been the ''tourist" 
in Eugene Field's ''Man Who Worked 
with Dana on the Noo York Sun." 

It was the custom of printers then, as 
now, to exploit for their amusement the 
ignorance of every new apprentice (devil) 
who came to work with them. He must 
always trundle a wheelbarrow to the rival 
plant to borrow a "type-smasher," and 
to return laden with railroad iron or other 
handy junk. He learned, too, all about 
"type-lice" and "left-handed shooting- 
_ . sticks," and acquired other 

'^m information still less valu- 
able. 

We disliked to go on, but 
there were many blocks to 
traverse, and the afternoon 
shadows were lengthening. 
Professor Giogger At the Mcthodist Church 
we met Dan Robins and Professor Giog- 
ger, the town's artist, who wore, of course, 
the Windsor ties affected by their provin- 
cial type. Dan Robins was poor, but 
honest, and his brother James rich and 
honest, and they were very good friends. 

198 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 



Each had two daughters, and the rich 
brother's were soon married, but their 
husbands did not amount to much. Once 
eJames twitted Dan gently about the single 
blessedness of his pair, and 
Dan came back less gently: 

^'When my girls get 
married, I'll see that they 
are married off, not on, like 
yours," he said, and debate 
ended there. 

At Mace's Corners we 
stopped to chat with Jim 
Silvis, driver of the Pleasant 
Unity and Lycippus hack. 
He always reminded us of 
Santa Glaus when all his toys were gone. 
Jim looked like the Santa Claus — or the 
Saint Nicholas — of the well-known verse, 

"His eyes, how they twinkled! His dimple, how 

merry ! 
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. 
He had a broad face and a round little belly 
That shook when he laughed like a bowlful of 

jelly." 

But his horses were always poor and 
skinny and his harness pieced together 

199 




Jim Silvis 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

with ropes and scraps of strap. We 
always wondered how they ever made the 
hills on the Lycippus road, and as we left 
him we shouted, ''Caw, caw," by way of 
intimation that they were proper crow 
bait. Jim didn't care. He laughed, and 
used the stub of a broken whip to urg,e 
the weary beasts on again. 

Jim's whole outfit was so worn and 
disreputable that it creaked and wobbled 
over the ruts, and his passengers, ever 
diminishing in number as his fortunes 
waned and his need grew, were ashamed 
to come into town in such an equipage, 
and took to leaving him at Bair's mill, 
and finishing the trip afoot. 



20G 



CHAPTER XXII. 

A Mellow and Affable Crowd — "Bumble- 
bee" Lewis — "Iodine Joe" and Hugh 
Artley, the Pump Doctor. 

THE north porch of the Kettering 
House at Mace's Corners held the 
most distinguished group of citizens we 
had seen in our whole day. 
Lawyers, judges and pro- 
fessional men, accustomed 
to go to work at nine and 
quit at eleven, were 
gathered there. The after- 



noon was slipping away, ' "^^^ 

_ ^, ^^ i^ "^ 1 Bumblebee Lewis 

and they were mellow and 
affable. The group at the corner watched 
'' Bumblebee" Lewis, who seemed to be 
debating with himself how best to per- 
suade an acquaintance to buy him another 
drink. 

'' Bumblebee" never worked, and, now 
that toxins and anti-toxins have come 

201 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

into recognized being, I am confident that 
a drop of his sweat would turn the huski- 
est gang of track laborers into I. W. W. 
shouters. He was a droopy individual, 
resembling always a wet, old rooster, and 
he seemed always afflicted by a sniffling, 
watery cold in his head. 

A drop on the end of a man's nose is 
an unlovely thing, but it does attract an 
interested glance periodically. You can 
not keep from wondering what will be- 
come of it. *' Bumblebee" was always in 
just that state, his skinny, red proboscis, 
with its sparkling drop. 

"I went to see my gal last night; 
I was with pleasure seeking; 
I missed her mouth and kissed her nose, 
And the 'gol darn' thing was leakin'." 

Ugh! I can see him now. 

Half a dozen horsemen stopped before 
the hotel while three small jockeys 
brought out three spirited thoroughbreds 
to show their paces in a dash to the Bee- 
hive Church and back. The sidewalk 
group was at attention. It always was, 
though Saturday afternoon always had 
its horseshow. 

202 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



'^ Iodine Joe" Little, swipe at a near-by 
stable, held the blankets, and displayed 
the most interest. He was a regular 
holder-on at Cashey's Feed 
and Sale Stable, and he belied 
his name. Big and fat and 
slouchy, careless of dress, 
long-haired and notably 
*' whiskery," he had been 
called '' Whiskers" until 
^'Iodine" came to be his title. 

Joe was the son of a well- 
to-do farmer who had lost his 
inheritance because of his 
fondness for liquor, and who 
owned only the patched clothes in which 
he stood. He was the boss harness-cleaner 
and buggy- washer of the town, and he had 
a Munchhausen-like reputation for his 
handling of the facts in a horse trade. 

He had once mistaken a bottle of 
iodine for his own bottle of red-eye, and, 
though he recovered, he never lived down 
the name. 

Another doctor passed in a one-horse 
wagon, which held, besides the driver and 
his dog ''Poker," a brand-new, cucumber- 

203 




Iodine Joe 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

green pump. It was Hugh Artley — 
neither homeopath nor allopath nor horse 
— but pump doctor to the whole district. 
He was a notable of those parts, and his 
dog always sat beside him on the seat. 

Hugh was a busy little fellow, always 
on the jump and always talking. Aside 
from pumps, his one diversion was poli- 
tics, and he argued unceasingly. The visi- 
tor to his shop was always regaled by 
startling discussion of the affairs of 
nation. State and community, and Hugh 
always spoke his mind. 

The old tow^n regarded him with 
especial esteem because of his trick of 
locating water with a forked stick of 
peach or willow. You won't believe it, 
but the fact remains that when Hugh 
Artley paraded across country, forked 
stick in hands, backs down against his 
Avaistcoat pockets, the stick would bend 
to water underground. 

Try it yourself and learn belief. 



204 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Men of Greendale, and Amos 
Kepper, the Spiritualist. 

AT Mace's Corners we came to the end 
of the old town's business district, 
and faced again the fat farmland of the 
open country. As I look back, it seems 
to me — as it did in those days — that that 
town had more idle men, apparently with 
no means of support, loafing in its street, 
than any other community of its size in 
the country. I know — or think I know, 
now — why the men of that generation took 
life so unconcernedly. 

The men of that town, in almost every 
instance, owned their homes, and most of 
them had a few hundred dollars laid by, 
and working for them day and night, in 
six or seven per cent, farm mortgages. 
They had large and productive gardens 
and orchards. Their vegetable plots and 
their fruit-trees supplied them in the sum- 

205 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

mer, and from the surplus they stored 
away food for the winter months. They 
had capacious cellars, or, lacking those, 
dug caves out of doors in which to store 
apples, cabbages, potatoes and the like. 
What town boy can not remember going 
out with spade and mattock to open up 
that treasure-housed 

And there were advantages other than 
the yield of those gardens, insurance as it 
was against illness and doctors' bills. 
There was the joy of looking forward to 
planting-time, or looking through ornately 
illustrated catalogs from the seed-houses, 
the joy of turning up the warm, fresh 
earth, the tender gleam of growing plants 
and the well-remembered thrill of the first 
gleaning of fresh vegetables for mother's 
table. 

Every third man on the street owned 
a cow, too, and sold his less fortunate 
neighbors butter and milk at a low price, 
or exchanged these dairy products for 
fruit, eggs or vegetables. Almost every 
family kept its hens, and perhaps a few 
pigs in a pen at the rear of the lot. There 
were no town ordinances, then, against 

206 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Iveeping pigs within the corporate limits; 
the householders competed for the honor 
of raising the largest porker. 

Folk were saving in wearing-apparel 
then. A suit or dress or overcoat was 
worn, as a matter of course, for several 
years. Boots and shoes were hand-made, 
of real calfskin, cured in old-fashioned 
tanneries, and they wore for years. 

Taxes were low, and few, if any, faced 
special assessments, for pavements were 
rare and sidewalks, street-cleaning and 
flushing, water and light bills were un- 
known. Every home had its well of clear, 
palatable, wholesome water, so cool that 
ice was not required, and a cistern against 
recurrent wash-days. How many times 
have I thawed the pump with a red-hot 
poker, thrust down the core of its cucum- 
ber-green body, and carried a thousand 
bucketfuls of water into the kitchen be- 
fore the school bell rang! 

There was, indeed, no plumbing which 
a red-hot poker might not relieve. I 
doubt if there were half a dozen real 
bathtubs in the town. And there were no 
gas bills, for gas was rated a great lux- 

14 207 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

ury, and no telephones or electric wires, 
a few, very few, servant or nurse bills. A 
kindly aunt or a motherly neighbor ren- 
dered those services for which the gradu- 
ate nurse now requires her twenty-five — 
or is it thirty-five? — ^per. 

The daily papers did not trouble us. 
Most men depended upon substantial 
country weeklies for their general infor- 
mation, and went to religious weeklies or 
monthlies for their inspiration. There 
were no street-car fares or bills for gaso- 
line or ice-cream soda or motion-picture 
theater seats. Ice bills were a rarity, and 
coal was delivered by the wagon-load and 
stored in the coal-house at the far end of 
the lot, as we boys verily believed, that 
we might have the job of carrying it to 
the house. 

Every family baked its own bread and 
pies and doughnuts; made its own soap 
from home-made lye and table of butcher- 
ing scraps. Flour and groceries were 
bought in bulk; so were sugar and molas- 
ses. Draymen delivered them at the pur- 
chaser's expense, and no merchant 
dreamed of free deliveries. 

208 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The fact is that those dads of ours were 
wise, resourceful men, who had solved the 
problem of living happily and in comfort 
within their means. They were never 
troubled by social ambition — that scourge 
of modern life. 

Those things which now we call neces- 
sities were luxuries, or else undreamed of, 
but we were none the worse. In those 
days the whole family gathered about the 
stove in the one ^'het" room, and skipped 
shivering to icy beds when the time came. 
None grumbled at the cost of living. Per- 
haps it was just as well. 

Those were the days of gilded cattails 
and water-color mottoes on the wall; the 
days when asparagus sprigs were stuck 
behind the pictures for flies to light on; 
when mother gave dad a moustache cup 
and dad gave mother a shawl at Christmas 
time, and the boys got copper-toed boots 
and the girls red-striped woolen stockings, 
knitted hoods, fascinators. Sister used to 
paint her beau's name on a two-inch rib- 
bon to fit within his hat. (I have one now, 
and can't remember where it came from.) 

But why go further? 

209 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The old town was like a thousand others 
of its day, better, perhaps, in recollection 
than experience. I love it yet, as must 
every child who ever dwelt there. 

Just across the way, in a dilapidated 
old house, the shutters of which were all 
drawn, lived old Amos Kepper, the town 
Spiritualist, eccentric, wealthy, altogether 
a recluse. He was scarcely ever seen out- 
side his home, but his neighbors knew that 
he had many callers, friends who gathered 
to hear him discourse of spirit communion, 
and who believed implicitly in his power 
to raise tables as well as ghosts. 

They told a rare story of the old man, 
who was a shrewd hand at a bargain. 

''Yank" Brownell had bought a farm 
from him, paying part cash and offer- 
ing three annual first-mortgage notes. 
"Yank" paid the first and second prompt- 
ly, but three weeks before the last fell due 
he went to old Amos, asking an extension 
of three months' time. 

Amos wouldn't hear of it, at first, but 
when "Yank" coaxed him he consented 
to go into the next room and consult his 
spirit advisers. "Yank" listened, in some 

210 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

awe, to the mumblings through the door, 
and then Amos came back, laughing. 

^' 'Yank/ " said he, ''the spirits seem 
to think mighty well of you. They tell 
me things will shape themselves so you'll 
have no difficulty meeting that note on the 
right day. I'll take their Avord for it, and 
expect you to be prompt." 

"Yank" did not despair. He argued 
again with old Amos, and finally pushed 
him into the next room, urging him to 
"put in a good word for 'Yank' Brownell 
with the spirits, and see if they won't 
give him a chance." 

But the spirits insisted that the note 
be paid on time, and paid it was. 

Ever after that Amos Kepper cited 
this instance to justify his faith in mystic 
power, always concluding with the decla- 
ration that "the mind above is greater 
than mine, and it has never failed to ad- 
vise me safely." 

It was no wonder that we passed the 
Kepper house in haste. 



211 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Open Country — Pillars in the 
Church — The Town Boot- maker — 
Cemetery Hill and the Town Trag- 
edy. 

THE business district ended at Mace's 
Corners, and we faced again the 
open country. Down a last cross-street 
we heard two men disputing emphatically 
in language which we did not altogether 
understand. It was Gen. Dick Courtney 
and Zach Grerton, and they swore 
mightily. 

Both were pillars in the church, and 
each abominated the other. 

The town recalled how, when General 
Courtney once heard his small son Dick 
trying an unusual swear word, he turned 
in surprise to his wife to say: 

^^Oh, Emma, Emma, this boy of ours 
must have been playing about where Zach 
Brerton was." 

213 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



I still wonder if good Doctor Hacke, of 
the Beehive Church, talking to his sexton 
Truxell, just around the corner, heard 
these good church neigh- 
bors. 

We came now to our own 
church, the Presbyterian, 
where Jabez College, the 
janitor, was sweeping down 
the steps in preparation for 
the services of the morrow. 
The big double doors, which 
led from vestibule to audi- 
torium, were open, and we 
could look through to the 
plain wooden benches which 
served for pews. 

The wealthier parishioners brought 
their own cushions, and sometimes up- 
holstered the little wooden benches which 
served for foot-rests. The pulpit was be- 
yond the rows of pews, and the choir loft 
above it. 

Beside the church was the parsonage — 
never the manse, as some will call it nowa- 
days — and next it stood old man Bott's 
shoe-store. There it was that Bass Mell, 

214 




Sexton Truxwell 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

the town dandy, met defeat at the hands 
of the proprietor. 

Bass had ordered a pair of calfskin 
boots, giving the most explicit directions 
in regard to quality and style, but making 
no advance payment or inquiry as to price. 
Two weeks later he came in with friends 
to ask for them. The cobbler knew his 
tardiness in meeting, obligations, and he 
said dryly: 

'*No, the boots ain't done, but the bill's 
made out." 

At the little brick church of the Cove- 
nanters half a dozen boys were playing 
'' Anthony Over," flinging the ball over the 
roof. Deacon Canon enjoined them gently 
enough against breaking the windows, but 
^'Hen" Temper, the town tinner, who was 
repairing the spouting, and who had to 
dodge repeatedly, was violent in his im- 
precations. 

^^Hen" was an expert in the manufac- 
ture of tin ornaments for buildings, able 
to produce anything from an eagle to an 
elephant. He was known, also, as the 
first man at every fire, and he used in- 
dustriously a little hand extinguisher of 

215 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Ms own invention, which much resembled 
the modern bicycle pump. He used to 
carry a pail of water as a supply for it, 
and choose some vantage-point upon the 
roof from which he directed a puny 
stream. 

We did not join the game, but passed 
on, by the home of the Lowry twins, 
whose governess, Sadie Kildare, did not 
approve of meddling boys, and 
halted to watch the Woods girls 
playing croquet in their beauti- 
ful yard. 

A disturbance down the 
street called us on. Some small 
boys were tormenting ^'Deafy" 
Stimp, the town idiot — or, 
rather, were trying to torment 
him. But ''Deafy," dressed 
grotesquely in regimentals, 
Deafy Stamp f^^i^j j^^t and fcathcrs, with 

great gilt epaulets upon the shoulders of 
a coat three sizes big, marched stiffly 
along, carrying in one hand a great 
wooden sword and in the other a pair 
of beef bones, which he rattled en- 
gagingly. 

216 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Then we caught our first ride of the 
day, jumping in behind Joe Steele's big 
Somerset wagon, and staying there till 
we passed crippled Tommy McCabe's 
root-beer and gingercake store. 

At the German burying-ground we 
jumped off and climbed the high bank to 
the graveyard fence. It was a favored 
playground, and the hallow^ ed spot re- 
sounded in those years to many a game of 
*'Hi Spy" and "Prisoner's Base." Many 
soldiers lay buried there, and their low 
tombstones were convenient for leap-frog. 
On Memorial Day, though, we children 
came thither in different spirit, for it was 
the good custom to march down solemnly, 
flower-laden, to pay tribute to the dead. 

Beyond the cemetery a little way, and 
not far from Bair's mill, was the crested 
knoll of Sand Bank Hill, carpeted in 
green and bowered in wild roses, a restful 
retreat for the pedestrian and tryst for 
lovers. On moonlight nights the boys and 
girls of the old town often made their way 
there to spoon, risking the interruption 
only of some drunken miner singing his 
way home. 

217 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

The old town had its tragedies, too, 
and things better unremembered : vile 
language, such as no active boy can fail 
to hear; indecent stories by gray-bearded 
corner loafers; foul scandal, breathed by 
lechers on some chaste woman's name; 
workmen cursing their employers ; ingrati- 
tude repaying every good. 

I would awaken no forgotten heart- 
ache, but let me, none the less, place my 
own construction on what seems, at a dis- 
tance of some forty years, a grievous 
error of justice. 

No one from that old town forgets the 
bright autumn morning when we learned 
that ''Mack" Hickson had killed a coal 
miner. ''Mack" was the promising son 
of one of our good landlords, twenty-four, 
rich in friends, of good education and 
splendid prospects. The whole town liked 
him. 

In those days the law read that, when 
a landlord was personally informed by a 
member of a man's family that he was ex- 
pected to refuse intoxicants to him as an 
habitual drunkard, the landlord must re- 
fuse or lose his license. This burly miner 

218 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

came into the Hickson House bar and 
demanded drink. The bartender served 
him, but "Mack," who was in the office, 
remembered that the man's wife had 
served notice on the house not to sell him 
liquor. Hurrying into the bar, he snatched 
the glass from the miner's hand. 

The man assailed him furiously with 
words and blows, and "Mack" leaped over 
the bar, drove him back, and finally felled 
him with a blow on the jaw. The miner's 
head struck an iron cuspidor, and he died 
instantly. 

Hotel servants, believing the man to 
be only "paralyzed drunk," dragged him 
without, and half a dozen young men, all 
mellowed by their visits to other bars, 
loaded the corpse into a wheelbarrow and 
trundled down the street singing cheerily: 

"One wide river — there's one wide river to cross." 

And then they saw their error, and 
fled. The law never learned who they 
were. 

"Mack" was taken to jail the next 
morning, held without bail, tried for man- 
slaughter, and sent to State's prison for 

219 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

several years. There was hardly a heart 
in that old town that did not ache when 
he was taken away to the place which 
blasted his hopes, shriveled his soul, 
warped his ambition, smeared his honor 
and killed in him all that man holds dear. 

Judge not! — thou canst not tell how soon the look 
of bitter scorn 

May rest on thee, though pure thy heart as dew- 
drops in the morn. 

Thou dost not know what freak of fate may place 
upon thy brow 

A cloud of shame to kill the joy that rests upon 
it now. 

Judge not! 

— Anonymous. 



220 



CHAPTER XXV. 

Lew Henry, the Locomotive Engineer — 
Mrs. Monegan's Shanty — The Rail- 
road Wreck — Bair's Mill and Beggar- 
loots. 

THE ''four-thirty cokes/' slow-mov- 
ing, grunting trains, were puffing up 
the steep grade, and we listened for Lew 
Henry's whistle. We always knew it, and 
the whole town knew the why of it. Lew 
had a flirtation with the prettiest girl in 
Paradise, and he was accustomed to begin 
whistling away down by the County 
Home, his blasts growing in volume as 
he neared Huff's Station. At Paradise, 
though, he always took his hand from the 
whistle cord to wave to the belle of those 
parts. Miss Angle, who was always at the 
window with a radiant smile for him. 

We watched the trains pull past the 
little engine-house; the old ''gallows 
tree," where Corrigan was hanged; 

221 




MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Smith's slaughter-house, the vilest-smell- 
ing place in the county^ and Mrs. Mone- 
gan's little Irish shanty, as we called it. 
For miles around the country knew Mrs. 
Monegan, her hare-lipped 
son Larry and his goats. I 
must always remember that 
shanty, for there it was 
that, for the first and only 
time, in my life, I saw a 
violent death. 
„ ,. ^ ^ I was on my way to my 

Hare-hpped Larry ^ ./ ./ 

grandfather's, south of 
town, and had just reached the top of 
Bair's Hill w^hen I heard a great crash 
and saw that, just at the engine-house, 
an engine and several south-bound cars 
had struck a cut of cars and caboose 
standing on the siding. 

I raced over as fast as my little legs 
could carry me, and reached the wreck 
just as the trainmen carried the engineer 
of the south-bound from his cab into Mrs. 
Monegan's shanty and laid him on the 
floor, and I saw him writhe in agony and 
point dramatically to one of the little knot 
of his companions, and scream hoarsely: 

222 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

^'You did it. You did it. Your care- 
lessness has killed me." 

And he died before the man, prostrate 
on his knees beside him, could be for- 
given. 

From Bair's orchard came the shrill 
notes of peafowls and guinea-hens, but, 
though peafowls and guinea-hens are 
always more interesting to boys than ordi- 
nary barnyard poultry, we had no time 
to stop for inspection. We went down the 
slope of the knoll to the foot of the hill 
below the mill. 

One of the Bair girls was playing the 
piano, and we heard the words of that 
beautiful old song: 

' ' For the moon never beams without bringing me 
dreams 

Of my beautiful Annabel Lee ; 
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes 
Of my beautiful Annabel Lee." 

Some of the young dandies of the old 
town had dropped in, ostensibly to talk 
with the Bair brothers, but really to hear 
their sister sing, and it was apparent, at 
least to us, that they were waiting for the 
pretty MoUie to step to the doorway to 

15 223 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



greet them. We would not wait for that, 
though. 

We picked our way through flocks of 
geese which cumbered the roadway, and 
halted at the old mill to watch the pigeons 
feeding on the grain which had fallen 
from wagons. Just then there was a com- 
motion among the young bloods at the 
gate, for pretty MoUie Breechbill from. 
Pleasant Unity and radiant Kate George 
from Latrobe, mounted on frisky horses, 
rode by on their way to town. They were 
planning, we knew, to enter the Young- 
Ladies ' Riding Race at the coming County 
Fair, and they gave an exhibition of their 
horsemanship as they went up the hill. 

'"Skinny" and I hoped they'd win. 

"' Sunflower" Beardsley was weaving 
his way along the path beside the road on 
his weekly visit to the town's taverns. 
We knew that when he returned he would 
have a "' singing jag." From their father's 
blacksmith shop over the way the little 
Knoblock children called after him de- 
risively. 

And right there "'Sunflow^er" passed 
''Beggarloots" Tom Hardy, mumbling and 



224 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 



staggering. He had already paid his 
weekly visit to the town. 

''Beggarloots" was the man who met 
a prosperous citizen one morning and 
greeted him effusively, concluding his well 
wishes with a request for tobacco. That 
night, on his way home, he met the same 
citizen, and saluted him with: 

''Go to blazes, Mr. , IVe got my 

own tobacco now." 



'Every time Beggarloots comes to town, 
He starts to chase the booze aroun' — 

It makes no difference if it gets him down, 
He keep on chasing the booze aroun'." 



225 



CHAPTER XXYI. 

"The First Regrets of the Day" — The 
Old Home and Mother — "The Home- 
coming" AND "The Old Swimming- 
hole/" 

THE first regrets of the day came then. 
From the valley of the stream that 
furnished power for the mill climbed a 
boastful, happy company, homeward 
bound, their catch dangling from their 
shoulders. 

^'Baldy" Brerer, Adam Fisher, Tucker 
Reamer, Billy Robinson, Lucien Tumey, 
"Hod" Steck and Joe Boomer had been 
fishing since dawn, and they went home 
altogether happy. 

The sinking sun, the noisy return of 
the fishermen, the creaking of the great 
mill doors as old Mr. Bair closed up for 
the night — these told us that our journey 
along the Main Street was done. We 
looked wistfully at the old causeway 

227 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

which led up the hill, and turned home- 
ward reluctantly. A cheery greeting from 
Jesse Kilgore and his wife, who passed 
us bound for home, and asked us, next 
Saturday, to visit their farm, made the 
long walk easier. 

On that bright day our hurrying feet 
carried us past the old home swiftly 




Old Home 



enough, for we had just begun our jour- 
ney, but I can not pass it so swiftly now. 
On the porch we saw my mother, who 
smiled and waved at us, but she wasted 
no time. 



228 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

She could not rest, however busy at 
play might be the sixteen hands of her 
children. Our feet, perhaps, were seldom 
quite in the right path, and our hands 
always in mischief, yet she seemed always 
with us, always teaching — and, I believe, 
with success — the elementary principles 
of truth and honesty and sobriety. 

In the evening, now as then, I can see 
her sweet and kindly face against the 
darkening background, radiant, refresh- 
ing and refining as a benediction the cur- 
rent of my daily life. Always, it seemed, 
she had a healthy, happy baby in her arms 
while she called her youngsters together 
to make ready for sleep, listening to nur- 
sery rhymes of every sort, meanwhile. 

We children knew the "Mother Groose," 
of course, but to this day my favorites are : 

"Eeney, meeney, miney, mo, 
Catch a nigger by the toe — 
When he hollers let him go ! 
Eeney, meeney, miney, mo," 
and 

"Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, 
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief," 

and more of the same. 

229 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

And always, after the final moment of 
evening cheer, we said that well-remem- 
bered ''Now I lay me," and, with a last 
''Good night" and a kiss, climbed the 
stairs to our beds. 

The mother who taught me that is 
eighty-three, but to this day, as then, she 
lives for her children. 

She has almost traversed the Main 
Street of Life, and Love and Faith and 
Kindliness are her companions to the 
journey's end. 



230 



CHILD AND MOTHER* 

Eugene Field. 

Mother-My-Love, if you'll give me your hand, 
And go where I ask you to wander, 

1 will lead you away to a beautiful land — 
The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder. 

We'll walk in a sweet-poise garden out there 
Where moonlight and starlight are streaming 

And the flowers and the birds are filling the air 
With the fragrance and music of dreaming. 

There'll be no little tired-out boy to undress, 

No questions or cares to perplex you; 
There'll be no little bruises or bumps to caress, 

Nor patching of stockings to vex you. 
For I'll rock you away on a silver-dew stream, 

And sing you asleep when you're weary, 
And no one shall know of our beautiful dream 

But you and your own little dearie. 

And when I am tired I'll nestle my head 

In the bosom that's soothed me so often, 
And the wide-awake stars shall sing in my stead 

A song which our dreams shall soften. 
So, Mother-My-Love, let me take your dear hand, 

And aM^ay through the starlight we'll wander — 
Away through the mist to the beautiful land — 

The Dreamland that 's waiting out yonder ! 

*Copyright aad used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons 
Company, New York. 

231 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

Home-comings such, as that, of course, 
are gone forever, but home-comings are 
always well worth while. Why not a 
Home-coming Week for the old town? 

Who can doubt the readiness of the 
boys and girls still there to make every 
needed arrangement, or the enthusiasm 
with which their fellows, from Maine to 
California, would welcome any general in- 
vitation'^ We'd take complete possession 
of the old town, ramble through the old 
academy, ring the old bell again, and then 
come down to loaf in Courthouse Square 
and rob Culbertson's orchard — ^if it's still 
there. 

We would crawl under the old culvert 
and build a dam there and create a swim- 
ming-hole, visit the Fairgrounds, choose 
sides and play ball, if only to show our 
sons in college what men we used to be. 
And we would sit in the shade in the old 
schoolyard — such shade is rare indeed — 
and talk over the days of long ago. And 
we'd have the old band, as well as the new 
band, play every afternoon and evening. 

Of course, there would be crow's-feet 
about the temples of all too many of us, 

232 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

and bald spots a-plenty, but such a home- 
coming would bring youth again. Age 
may be forgotten when folks grow old 
together. 

As for me, I can name eight boys and 
girls who might be trusted to make every 
effort to return, and it would be their first 
reunion since the boy first to leave home 
packed his little trunk, kissed the family 
all 'round, and started out for himself. 
We would all be there — Jack and Annie, 
Will and Jess, Minnie and Budd, and Ger- 
trude and Bess, and mother too. Dad — 
and Dad would enjoy it as no other — is 
gone. 

Such a Home-coming Week could not 
but reward every visitor, if only because 
it would impress upon them that the past 
is not dead. I would give much to make 
my journey down My Own Main Street 
with ''Skinny'' once again. 

But I can not quit that swimming-hole 
without a further word. My thoughts go 
back to it as a boy goes back to dive after 
he has picked up a garment, and he knows 
it is time to hurry home. And yet it was 
hardly a swimming-hole to brag of. 

233 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 




The Old. Swimming-hole 



234 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

We made it ourselves, every May. We 
were accustomed to rob rail fences of the 
long, sound timbers, and lay them cross- 
wise of the stream under heaps of stones; 
to fling in brush, weighted with other 
stones, and even to plaster crevasses in our 
crude levee with mud from the yellow clay 
banks. We built real dams in this way — 
dams which endured for weeks, unless 
summer freshets or irate farmers inter- 
fered; dams which backed up water some- 
times three feet deep and made ponds in 
which small boys could really swim. 

I have worked harder, I maintain, on 
just such dams as this than ever in forty 
years of earning my own living, and I sus- 
pect that I have derived, at the same time, 
more real satisfaction from my accom- 
plishments. Swimming-holes in the vicin- 
ity of Grreendale had to be made, for we 
were less fortunate than some communi- 
ties. 

And the wonders of a small boy's 
swim ! 

What real American boy can forget 
the hurried "sneak" after school, the race 
along the dusty wagon-road, the scramble 

235 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

over and under the fence and the dash 
through the tall grass to the trees which 
shaded the bank, the frenzied haste of the 
disrobing, and the first plunge! But the 
haste and the plunge were for elders. 

The younger boys of every generation 
have undressed with fear and trembling, 
laid their clothes out carefully free of the 
mud, and advanced, knock-kneed and 
trembling, to stick their toes into the 
water and lament its chill. They have 
tried strange camp preventives suggested 
by their evil-minded elders, have splashed 
themselves freely on arms and head and 
chest, and ducked, to come up spluttering. 

And they have learned to swim because 
they had to; have tried breast stroke and 
dog-fashion betAveen splashing their fel- 
lows and painting themselves with mud 
until they mastered the art, and then 
branched out into swimming on the back 
and ^'Indian fashion," as we styled what 
now they call the trudgeon. In those days 
none had heard of the crawl, but I would 
bet, to-day, on the old ways. 

I was ducked, in those days, by bigger 
boys and came up screaming. I ''chawed 

236 



MY OWN MAIN STREET 

beef" with the best of them, and made 
others chaw in turn. I cracked rocks under 
Avater when my comrades dived, and went 
home often with an earache because of it 
— or of the water in my ears. I learned, 
too, how unfailing is that mother's test 
for disobedience in early spring, and how 
the boy who goes swimming brings home, 
always, a nose as cold as any dog's. 

But why arouse my own regrets'? I 
dare say, now, that were there an Old 
Home Week, the wiser ones would choose 
to safeguard their illusions, and to stay 
far away from that old swimming-hole. 
I can ^dsualize its old-time glories, and I 
have a right to ask no more. Were we to 
try to bring them back — to build a dam 
again, and wade in boldly — no doubt we'd 
take more seriously the muddy bottom, 
the ever-present blood-suckers and the 
proximity to traveled roads. 



237 



CONTENTMENT.* 

Eugene Field. 

Happy the man that, when his day is done, 

Lies down to sleep with nothing to regret — 
The battle he has fought may not be won — 

The fame he has sought be just as fleeting yet; 
Folding at last his hands upon his breast, 

Happy is he, if, hoary and forspent, 
He sinks into the last, eternal rest 

Breathing these only words : ' ' I am content. ' ' 

But happier he that, while his blood is warm, 

Sees hopes and friendships dead about him lie; 
Bares his brave breast to envy's bitter storm, 

Nor shuns the poison barbs of calumny — 
And, 'mid it all, stands sturdy and elate, 

Girt only in the armor God hath meant 
For him who 'neath the buffetings of fate 

Can say to God and man : " I am content, ' ' 



*Oopyright and used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons 
Company, New York. 



238 



